The Lt. Governor V.K. Saxena today issued categorical instructions to officers to submit a plan of action within the next three days for complete razing of all three garbage mountains situated at Ghazipur, Bhalaswa, and Okhla after he visited the sanitary landfill site at Ghazipur.

He also instructed that a dedicated team of officers is constituted to draw out the plan of action mentioning a fixed date of completion.

“The LG has suggested adopting the reverse engineering model so as to ensure that the deadlines are met and goals achieved. The action plan to be submitted by MCD will be monitored on a regular basis by the Lt. Governor himself and if required, he would visit the site to see actual progress at regular intervals,” stated the LG office in a press statement.

Besides, a special cell will also be put in place in the LG Secretariat to monitor the work on a weekly basis.

During his visit to the site, the LG observed that the recycling activities were being undertaken on the mounds generating substantial dust that was adding to the haze and pollution in the adjoining areas.

He has therefore asked officers to address this by using recycled water from the nearby STP for sprinkling and settling the dust.

Spread over 70 acres, the Ghazipur landfill site has legacy waste amounting to 140 lakh metric tonnes.

Reviewing the ongoing work of bio-remediation at the site that also involves segregation of waste and off-take of recycled garbage, the Lt. Governor directed that the Ghazipur ‘Waste-to-Energy’ Plant be operationalized at the earliest so that the amount of fresh waste being added to the site is reduced.

Apart from this, he emphasized a campaign to involve the people of Delhi, NGOs, Ragpickers, and other civil society groups in the efforts to shape the skyline and landscape of Delhi so as to make the city free of mountains of garbage at various locations in the National Capital.

Underlining that the lapses, Mr Saxena instructed officials of MCD to regularly put out in the public domain the reduction in height of the mounds achieved as a result of their efforts at all the three sites in Ghazipur, Bhalaswa and Okhla.