Arvind Kejriwal stressed on the need to clean Delhi at the earliest.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal Thursday said the target of the Delhi government is to remove 50 lakh metric ton of waste that is remaining at the Bhalswa landfill site by March next year.
Mr 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 stressed on the need to clean Delhi at the earliest.
Mr Kejriwal was informed by officials that against the initial target to remove 6,500 metric tonnes of waste per day, 12,000 MT of waste will be removed every day soon.
With this, the Bhalswa Sanitary Landfill will be cleared of all the garbage by March 2024, they told the chief minister.
The Bhalswa Landfill is a 28 year old site spread across 70 acres. The landfill is one of the three infamous garbage mountains of Delhi.
The initial height of the landfill was 65 metres from ground level. When surveyed in 2019, it consisted of 80 Lakh MT of legacy waste. Since then, 24 Lakh MT of fresh waste has been dumped at the site and 30.48 Lakh MT of waste has been bio-mined there.
Talking to reporters, Mr Kejriwal said it was after the 2019 order of the NGT that work began to remove waste from the landfill site.
"At that time, there was around 80 lakh metric tons of waste. From 2019 until now, around 30 lakh metric tons of waste has been removed from this site and presently it holds around 50 lakh metric tons of waste.
"The MCD now under the Aam Aadmi Party will work even faster and we are targeting to remove another 30 lakh metric ton of waste by December this year," he said.
The CM added that the final target of the Delhi government is to remove the entire 50 lakh metric ton of waste that is remaining at the site by March next year.
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.
He also added that by the end of this month, 12000 MT of waste will be removed every day. He said with the speed at which the work was going on at the Bhalswa landfill site, the area would be cleared of all the garbage by March 2024.
Providing details about the waste generation in Delhi, he said 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.
"Until then, the government has made temporary arrangements to clear off 2000 MT of waste over here at Bhalswa itself. On a daily basis, by the end of this month, around 10,000 MT of legacy waste and around 2000 MT of daily waste will be cleared off," he said.
Talking about waste segregation, Mr Kejriwal highlighted that segregation of waste is important and urged the residents to try and segregate waste at source, i.e. in their households.
However, he also said it is difficult to overnight change the habits of residents, and added that the waste was being segregated after being picked up from the households. He also said that in most of the waste-to-energy plants, segregation of waste is not necessary anymore.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)