Ghazipur waste lying on road irks tribunal

New Delhi: The National Green Tribunal on Tuesday rapped the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) for not lifting the segregated waste lying at the Ghazipur landfill site despite a specific direction.

 A bench headed by NGT chairperson justice Swatanter Kumar slammed the NHAI over its slow pace in finalising a tender to draft an agency to carry out the segregation of waste at the landfill site.

“You (NHAI) people do not want to do things seriously. You have received tenders. As part of the technical bid, you could have asked the bidders to lift the waste, but you only want to buy time. You could have asked anybody to pick up the waste and pay accordingly, but you don’t want to do it,” the bench observed.

This comes in the wake of the September 1 incident in which a portion of 45-metre-high Ghazipur landfill had collapsed due to heavy rains, killing two people and pushing a car and three two-wheelers into a canal.

The counsel representing the NHAI said the department was in the process of receiving tenders and the bids are to be opened on September 21.

The NGT directed the EDMC to submit a report on segregation, compaction and bio-remediation of the municipal solid waste at the site by Wednesday. During the proceedings, the EDMC told the bench that the landfill site at Ghazipur was set up in 1984 to dump civic solid waste and, at present, 1,300 million metric tonnes of garbage is dumped at this place which has attained a height of 45 metres. The EDMC claimed it was making efforts for proper management of waste and main hygiene around the landfill site.

The NGT had earlier rapped the Aam Aadmi Party government and the EDMC over the incident in which two persons were killed, saying “nothing can be more humiliating than people being killed under a garbage hill”. The NGT had issued notices demanding why action shoudn’t be taken against the Delhi government and criminal proceedings not taken against guilty EDMC officials.