MCG may miss another deadline to flatten Bandhwari landfill

The Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) is likely to miss the April 2024 deadline to process legacy waste at the city’s Bandhwari landfill

The Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) is likely to miss the April 2024 deadline to process legacy waste at the city’s Bandhwari landfill. The deadline is likely be to extended till December next year, officials aware of the matter said on Tuesday.

An earth moving machine on the Bandhwari landfill site at Gurugram-Faridabad Road. (Parveen Kumar/HT Photo)

MCG officials said that due to the ongoing strike by sanitation workers, the civic body has started a mega cleanliness drive and the collected waste is being taken to Bandhwari. This has overburdened the private agencies with an additional 200 tonnes of garbage. The functioning of the processing units have been affected and this will pose a hurdle in meeting the deadline, officials added.

MCG sanitation workers have been staging a nearly two-month strike to press for their several demands, including an increase in salary.

With no alternate plans, MCG is still dumping waste at the Bandhwari landfill apart from six material recovery facilities (MRFs), they said. An MRF is a centre where glass, plastic, metal, paper, cardboard, and rubber waste materials are segregated and handed over to MCG empanelled scrap dealers for recycling.

Naresh Kumar, joint commissioner of MCG, said, “The protesting workers were not letting private agencies to collect waste from many areas. So, garbage was seen littered on the roadsides of market areas as well as waste collection points at Basai, Khandsa and Chakkarpur. We have deployed 300 contractual workers in areas where heaps of garbage are lying for weeks. With the current situation we will not be able to meet the April deadline,” he said.

On December 30 last year, to resolve the issue of excess legacy waste at Bandhwari, a state committee that was constituted by the National Green Tribunal decided that from February 15 this year, 70% of fresh waste generated in Gurugram and 50% of garbage from Faridabad will not be sent to the landfill. The deadline was extended till March 31 and then to April 2024, which has now been extended to December, said officials.