NEW DELHI: Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday said the target of the Delhi government is to remove 50 lakh metric tons of waste that is remaining at the Bhalswa landfill site by March next year.
Kejriwal visited the Bhalswa Landfill on Thursday and expressed satisfaction at the speed at which the work was going on to clear the legacy waste piled up at the site.
He said that it was after the 2019 order of the NGT that work began to remove waste from this landfill site. At that time there were around 80 lakh metric tons of waste. From 2019 until now, around 30 lakh metric tons of waste have been removed and presently it holds around 50 lakh metric tons of waste.
The MCD will work even faster and we are targeting to remove another 30 lakh metric tons of waste by December this year, said Kejriwal. Asserting that work has been ongoing at double the speed, he said the initial target was to remove 6,500 metric tonnes of waste per day, but on Wednesday 9000 MT was removed.
“The initial target was to remove 6500 metric tonnes of waste per day, but yesterday (Wednesday) 9000 MT was removed. By the end of this month, 12000 MT of waste will be removed every day. With the speed at which the work was going on here at the landfill site, the area would be cleared of all the garbage by March 2024,” he said.
Providing details about the waste generation in Delhi, he said that around 11,000 MT of waste is generated every single day in the city. “Of this, around 8100 MT is cleared off on a daily basis through waste-to-energy and other modes of segregation. There is a deficit of around 2800 MT every day. For this purpose, the process is underway in Okhla to dispose of an additional 1000 MT every day,” he said.
For the remaining waste to be processed, a plant will come up in Bawana by 2026 and it will have a capacity of 2000 MT, he said. The chief minister highlighted that segregation of waste is important and urged the residents to try and segregate waste at source, i.e. in their households.