Sitting proudly as the cleanest city of the country, Indore, the commercial capital of Madhya Pradesh, is all set to extend a helping hand to New Delhi in solving its garbage mess in Gazipur area of East Delhi.
Cricketer-turned-politician and East Delhi MP, Gautam Gambhir, has invited Indore municipal corporation commissioner Ashish Singh to provide his expertise in clearing the Gazipur landfill site ,which has been in the news for being the tallest garbage mountain in the country.
Taking up the area of more than 40 football pitches, Ghazipur rises by nearly 10 metres per year with no end in sight to its reeking growth. According to official records, it was already more than 65 metres (213 feet) high this year. Concerned about safety of the passing jets, the Supreme Court last year had ordered installation of alert lights on the dumping site.
However, Indore’s tag of the cleanest city hasn’t come easy. The city, till recently, had a 100-acre reeking landfill site in Devguradia area choking with tonnes of plastic, organic and metal waste. The corporation had cleared 2 lakh metric tonnes of waste form the landfill in two years when young IAS officer Ashish Singh took over in 2018.
Through techniques like bio-remediation or bio mining, the corporation managed to segregate soil and recyclable substances like plastic, metal, paper, cloth and other solid materials from the landfill site. After the bio-remediation was undertaken on war footing, the process got completed for 13 lakh tonnes of waste in December 2018.
The recyclable materials were disposed properly as polythene was sent to cement plants and also for road construction. The soil recovered from the landfill was used for refilling the ground on the same site where greenery is being developed.
This was much quicker and much cost effective than conventional methods which required a five-year time and around Rs 65 crore budget, said an officer of the IMC. The corporation now plans a city forest on 90-acre and a garden on ten acre cleansed land.
Singh’s effort arned him national recognition and this perhaps, is the reason why Gambhir has invited him to visit New Delhi to conduct a workshop and share his expertise and experiences through a presentation, a senior officer of the corporation told News18.