NEW DELHI: Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday launched ‘Mukhyamantri Septic Tank Safai Yojana’, a scheme aimed at helping people in waste management and ensuring the safety of sanitation workers.
According to the government, the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) will deploy 80 trucks along with trained staff to ensure cleaning and maintenance of septic tanks across Delhi.
“Around 45 lakh citizens in the authorised and unauthorised colonies of the capital live in areas that do not have sewer pipelines and depend on septic tanks. Whereas the process to install sewage pipelines across all the unauthorised colonies is going on, it is important to ensure the cleanliness of the septic tanks through safe means” said Chief Minister Kejriwal.
The government plans to achieve three objectives with the scheme — a collection of waste from septic tanks in the colonies, ensuring safe disposal of the waste in sewage treatment plants, and deployment of trained staff with safety equipment for cleaning septic tanks.
According to the government, a tendering process will commence in this regard within the next month.
A DJB official said that 80 trucks will be procured by them and the residents of the colonies can call on a phone number provided by the Delhi government for the cleaning of septic tanks. As per the DJB, which is headed by the chief minister, there are 1,797 unauthorised colonies in Delhi, of which 430 colonies have sewer pipelines.
The rest of the colonies are equipped with septic tanks and work for installing sewer
pipelines is in progress.