Will hire another agency to speed up landfill work: Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal

NEW DELHI: With the work of bioremediation of the legacy waste at the Okhla landfill running behind schedule, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday said Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) would soon hire another agency to expedite the work.

The chief minister, however, added that non-formation of the MCD Standing Committee had caused the delay in hiring the agency.
While MCD had targeted to process 18 lakh metric tonnes of the total 45 lakh MT legacy waste lying at the Okhla landfill, it could barely tackle around 12 lakh MT. With the addition of over seven lakh tonnes of fresh municipal waste reaching the landfill, the municipal corporation now has a challenge to dispose of nearly 38 lakh MT waste by May 2024, the deadline announced by the then finance minister Kailash Gahlot in his budget speech earlier this year to flatten the mountain of garbage.
The high-powered Standing Committee plays a crucial role in all key financial decisions in the civic body. The committee has 18 members, including six elected by the MCD House and one elected from each of the 12 municipal zones. One person will be elected as chairman from among these 18 members. In the absence of the committee due to political flux, several important development projects are pending for approval in MCD.
Kejriwal said the process to engage a second agency was almost complete and would be done as soon as the Standing Committee would be formed. Without the committee, the contract cannot be awarded to any other agency, he pointed out after visiting the Okhla site. "One more agency will be involved in the work to dispose of the legacy waste and the two contractors together will be able to meet the target of May 2024. Delhi government and MCD are working diligently to remove all the mountains of garbage from Delhi," the chief minister said.
Kejriwal visited the Bhalswa landfill last week and officials said he would go on inspection to Ghazipur, the third of the three mountains of trash in the capital, soon.
Mayor Shelly Oberoi claimed that the height of the landfill had come down significantly due to the ongoing biomining work.
Delhi BJP, however, said Aam Aadmi Party's claims of clearing the landfill sites after winning the MCD polls last year had proved hollow. "It is shocking to see CM Arvind Kejriwal admitting during his visit to the Okhla landfill site that the work was very slow and far behind the schedule. The height of Ghazipur landfill is increasing and Okhla and Bhalswa, too, will not get cleared even by the end of 2025," Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor said.
Over 11,300 tonnes of waste is generated in the cityevery day, of which 8,713 metric tonnes are processed daily. Of this, over 7,400MT goes to the waste to energy (WtE) plants situated at Okhla,Narela, Ghazipur and Tehkhand. These plants are generating 23 megawatt, 24MW, 13MW and 25MW electricity per day, respectively, outof this waste.