Waste from Dhapa to be removed completely in next 2 yrs, says Min
Urban Development and Municipal Affairs Minister Firhad Hakim in the Assembly said that the mound of waste will be completely removed from Dhapa within the next two years. More than 50 per cent of removal works have been done, Hakim told the House.
Speaking on the state Budget for his department, Hakim said: “Dhapa dumping ground will be like a playground after two years. More than 50 per cent of the waste removal works have been completed. Around 1,10,000 metric tonne of solid waste is still lying in Dhapa ground. Around 13,769 tonne of solid waste is generated in the city every day out of which around 13,300 tonne of waste is collected from door to door.
Kolkata Municipal Corporation’s solid waste management department has already removed huge waste from Dhapa dumping ground to the east of Eastern Metropolitan Bypass. The remaining tonnes of legacy waste will be biomined to restore the area located in the heart of East Kolkata Wetlands, an ecologically fragile Ramsar site. Biomining is a process of using microorganisms (microbes) to extract metals of economic interest from waste.
KMC has to meet the 2025 deadline set by the West Bengal Pollution Control Board and then scientifically set up a sanitary landfill at Dhapa. The work, initially slated to be completed by 2024, has been extended till 2025 following the pandemic disruption.
Hakim also reminded that when the Mamata Banerjee government came to power in 2011 there were only two water projects under the Urban development and Municipal Affairs department.
The number has now gone up to 128 out of which 115 water treatment projects have been completed by the department, the minister said.
He said that the Centre is obsessed with the names of various projects. “State spends 60 per cent of the cost share under the ‘Swachh Bharat’ scheme in the case of big municipalities while in the case of a small civic body it bears 55 per cent of the cost. Under housing for all schemes the state bears around 57 per cent cost of the total project but the Centre has an allergy to a Bengali name,” Hakim said.
