Chandigarh MC team makes futile visit to Ambala waste plant

Wanting to study technology being used for dry waste management, municipal officials and councillors from Chandigarh visit a plant that processes only wet waste

A team of 10 councillors and officials of the municipal corporation (MC) on Tuesday visited an Ambala-based waste processing plant to examine the technology being used for processing dry waste. To their embarrassment, however, it turned out that the plant didn’t even process dry waste.

The MC has been delving on the issue of upgrading the waste processing plant for almost a year now. (HT FILE PHOTO)

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) councillor Shakti Prakash Devshali said, “The Ambala plant only processes wet waste while Chandigarh requires technology for dry waste processing.”

Criticising the BJP-led MC for the Ambala plant visit, Devinder Singh Babla, Congress councillor and leader of the opposition, said, “The visit was a total waste of time and energy. Thousands of MC funds were wasted on it. The MC is already processing its wet waste and only needs the technology for dry waste. Even then, we were taken to the Ambala plant, which only processes wet waste. The MC officials should have confirmed the status at the plant before they finalised the trip. When I asked them why it was not done beforehand, they replied ‘ab pata chal gaya (now we know)’.”

Notably, councillors during the MC General House meeting in May had decided to visit the plants of the firms, who had offered technological solutions for upgrading of the garbage processing plant, Sector 25. The aim was to study which technology is to be adopted for processing dry waste in Chandigarh.

The Ambala plant visit was the third such visit in these series of visits. Earlier, the councillors had visited two plants in Delhi.

Mayor Ravi Kant Sharma, who was also part of the MC team that visited the Ambala plant, said, “In their presentation before the House and councillors, the firm had stated they were processing dry waste at the plant. We were not told that this was not the plant where they were doing it. There was also an impression created that this plant might process Chandigarh’s waste for the time being before our plant was upgraded. But this was also not the case.”

More visits planned

Now, MC officials say more visits to other waste processing plants will have to be planned. Sharma said, “We may visit more plants before preparing the report regarding the visits.” He was confident that the visits would be completed in time so that an agenda on the issue could be tabled before the MC General House meeting scheduled for later this week.

The MC has been delving on the issue of upgrading the waste processing plant for almost a year now. Earlier, 13 companies had made presentations for alternative technologies to be adopted for upgrading dry waste processing in UT, which was working at less than 10% of its capacity.

As a result, most of the dry waste, around 250 metric tonnes daily, is being dumped at the dumping site without being processed. The MC had taken over the Dadumajra plant from Jaypee group in June last year.

After the MC House finalises the technology to be adopted, the MC will float tenders to hire an agency to upgrade, maintain and run the plant.