The Delhi government is working on a plan to eliminate the mountains of garbage in Delhi. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal visited the Bhalswa landfill site on Thursday. Earlier, Kejriwal visited the Okhla landfill site on March 3 and directed to clear the garbage by December 2023.
Chief Minister Kejriwal today said after taking stock of the garbage removal process from the Bhalswa landfill site that in the last 30 years the Bhalswa landfill site has become a big garbage mountain.
The garbage of entire Delhi comes here. The work of removing this garbage mountain is going on. Garbage removal started from here in 2019 after NGT’s order. At that time, about 8 million tonnes of waste was present at the Bhalswa landfill site.
From 2019 till date, 30 lakh tonnes of garbage has been removed. While 50 lakh tonnes of waste is lying on the site right now. In about two-and-a-half years, 30 lakh tonnes of garbage has been removed.
Kejriwal said, “Now we have set a target of removing 30 lakh tonnes of garbage by December 2023. We are hopeful that by March-April next year, the 50 lakh tonnes of waste left at the landfill site will be removed. The speed of garbage removal is now going on twice as fast as it was earlier. I have reviewed it as well. Earlier, 6,500 tonnes of garbage was being picked up daily from here. But since Wednesday 9 thousand tonnes of garbage is being picked up. By the end of this month, the speed of garbage collection will be doubled and about 12-13 thousand tonnes of garbage will start being lifted daily.
Kejriwal said, “Separate arrangements have been made for the new waste that is coming to the landfill site. Additional arrangements have been made to dispose of the newly arrived garbage and it is being disposed of continuously. About 11,000 tonnes of garbage is generated daily in Delhi. Out of that, we have arrangements for disposal of more than 8,100 tonnes of garbage. At the same time, about 2,800 tonnes of garbage is being saved daily. For this, the work of increasing the additional capacity of one thousand tonnes is going on in Okhla. To dispose of this waste, a 2,000 ton waste to energy plant is being built in Bawana, which will be ready by 2026. Till then we have made a temporary arrangement to dispose of the new waste on a daily basis.”
He said that 10,000 tonnes of legacy waste is generated per day from the Bhalswa site and 2,000 tonnes of waste is disposed of every day. Now a lot of waste can also go directly into Waste to Energy.
