Delhi Lt Governor V K Saxena on Saturday conducted a surprise inspection of the Ghazipur landfill site and sought ideas from people to help authorities raze the "unseemly mountains of garbage" in the national capital. There are three landfill sites in Delhi that account for 28 MT of waste. He even walked through sludge to its higher elevation level to take stock of the work underway to process huge volumes of garbage, officials said.
Describing the landfill sites in Delhi as "grave health hazards" and a "national shame", Saxena on July 1 reached out to the people and sought their ideas that could help efforts by authorities in getting rid of these "unseemly mountains of garbage".
In a sudden detour, which "included plying on his official BMW car, to an Innova car of an official, a Gypsy of the Delhi Police and finally a walk through the sludge on foot, the LG inspected the on-mound working of 10 new trommel machines which have been brought in after replacing the outdated machines at the site, after his visit and instructions in May, " the Raj Niwas said in a statement.
These machines are processing 10,000 MTs of garbage every day, it said. On May 29, Saxena had visited the "infamous mountain of garbage" and resolved to "get the capital rid of these mounds within a fixed time-frame of 18 months," the statement said. Reiterating his commitment to the deadline, he expressed hope that all three "mountains of garbage at Ghazipur, Bhalaswa and Okhla, will be totally done away with during the next 16 months".
"Braving the sludge, mud and slippery slopes of the garbage mound that made it impossible for a vehicle to climb up, the LG walked up to the peaks to take stock of the works in progress, " the statement said. He had earlier also instructed the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) to begin and expedite work for disposing of refuse-derived fuel (RDF), construction and demolition (C&D) waste and inert waste right away.
Saxena "expressed satisfaction" with the works underway at all the three landfill sites, wherein 4.3 lakh MT of garbage had been removed in June, and the target for July had been set at 3.6 lakh MT, due to the rains, the statement said. MCD officials on June 11 said that it had decided to deploy drones to map the elevation of landfills and also monitor the reduction in its height along with other parameters. A plan in this connection has been prepared and the project will soon be implemented, they said, adding that the report of the drone survey will also be sent to the lieutenant governor's office on a regular basis.
The civic officials had earlier said the deadline to flatten the Ghazipur landfill is December 2024 while efforts are on to raze the Bhalaswa dumping site by July next year. The Okhla landfill is likely to be flattened by December 2023. In 2019, the height of the Ghazipur landfill was 65 metres which was only eight metres less than the height of Qutub Minar. In 2017, a portion of the Ghazipur landfill had fallen on an adjacent road in which two people were killed.
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