Chandigarh, Sep 30 (IANS) Chandigarh’s reputation is taking a smelly beating. A lot of stink is being raised – environmentally and politically – over the city’s experiment with a solid waste processing plant set up by a leading private company to deal with the city’s garbage.
The stink from the garbage processing plant, being run by the private sector Jaypee Associates, has become a worrying point for city residents, the civic body and environmentalists ever since it was inaugurated in 2008.
‘The smell is so strong that you can detect it from almost 10 km away. I don’t know what the authorities are doing. The garbage plant has become a blot on the city instead of solving its waste problem,’ businessman Rakesh Sharma told IANS.
‘The other day I thought there was a burning smell in my car and I got out. It turned out that the entire place was stinking,’ he said.
The garbage processing plant was set up on 10 acres of land in Dadu Majra area on the outskirts of this union territory. The land was given by the Chandigarh administration to the company for setting up the plant.
Senior councillors and officials of the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation, who went at the expense of the Jaypee Associates to Germany to ‘study’ similar solid waste processing plants, are now saying the plant and its equipment in Chandigarh is not the same as what they were shown in Germany.
‘Those who went on the trip told an inquiry committee that the machinery and equipment installed here is not the same as shown to them in Germany,’ councillor Chandermukhi Sharma, who headed the committee, told IANS.
‘Some studies done by the PGIMER (Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research) and others have shown that these gases being emitted are carcinogenic,’ Chandermukhi said.
The municipal corporation is doing everything to solve the problem, said Chandigarh Mayor Ravinder Pal Singh.
‘The garbage at the site is not being processed properly. That is leading to the foul smell in various parts of the city. Residents of nearby areas of the plant are the worst affected,’ the mayor said.
The processing plant was to process 500 tonnes of garbage every day but has been unable to take care of even 300-400 tonnes of garbage so far.
A senior municipal corporation official told IANS that a special committee will be formed shortly from the city’s garbage and sanitation committee to visit a garbage processing plant in Surat town of Gujarat. The plant there is also being privately run.
‘The garbage disposal is not being done properly, which is leading to this foul smell in the city. I don’t understand under what conditions the private company was given the contract for this plant. They have failed,’ R.K. Kohli, chairman of the Department of Botany at Panjab University, told IANS.
‘Public funds have been misused and no one knows who to blame,’ he added.
‘The city is known to be pollution free. This smell is not desirable. This kind of a thing does not even happen in small cities. Though the city has the best green cover in the country, even these trees cannot do anything about the stink coming from the processing plant,’ said Kohli, who has authored books on the tree cover and environment in Chandigarh.
Company officials have refused to say anything on the issue.
Sources in the municipal corporation said the multi-million-rupee Jaypee group, which is majorly into cement manufacturing, infrastructure, power projects and other areas, is seeking international carbon credits.
Opposition party councillors blame the Congress, which rules the municipal body, for allowing the setting up of the plant without proper parameters.
(Jaideep Sarin can be contacted at jaideep.s@ians.in)
