Urban News

While Mohali has identified three more sites for setting up of common municipal solid waste management facility, Panchkula has recently got a final nod from the Union Environment Ministry for establishing similar facility in Jhuriwala village, close to Sector 25 in Panchkula.

Even as Mohali’s proposed sites in Samgauli (50 acres), Nimbuan (70 acres) (both near Dera Bassi) and Khairpur (150 acres) in Majri block are still awaiting initial go ahead from the Environment Ministry, Panchkula will take almost two years to set up the facility at Jhuriwala.

Till then, Mohali is dumping its almost 100 tonnes of untreated solid waste generated daily from its 2.5 lakh population in the densely inhabited Industrial Focal Point, Phase VIII-B, which houses MNCs like Quark and Dell besides other major industries and residential area while the similar amount of garbage of Panchkula is being dumped in Sector 23, much to the inconvenience of those living in Sector 23-28.

While the administrators cite non-availability of adequate sites for shifting the illegal dumping grounds, where the garbage is not even treated scientifically, the Pollution Control Boards of Punjab and Haryana also express their helplessness in initiating any action on the widespread pollution on the lame excuse that, “how can they stop dumping of garbage when there are no adequate sites available”. 

As a short-term arrangement, Mohali and Panchkula Deputy Commissioners had also requested Chandigarh Administration to allow dumping of their solid waste at Chandigarh’s waste processing and disposal facilities unit but Chandigarh Municipal Corporation had categorically refused to accept the offer.

In Mohali, another 58.79 acres site acquired for the facility at Swara-Rasanheri-Jhanjeri villages was recently rejected by the State Expert Appraisal Committee (SEAC) of the Union Ministry of Environment.

Though the SEAC’s site rejection report is yet to be considered by the Union Environment Ministry’s statutory body State-level Authority of Environment Impact Assessment (SAEIA), which is presently defunct in the absence of its chairman and member, a state-level committee, headed by Greater Mohali Area Development Authority (GMADA) Chief Administrator (CA) Vivek Pratap Singh, with Director, Local Government, SK Sharma as convener, formed by Chief Secretary SC Agrawal on the directions of Punjab and Haryana High Court, has identified three alternate sites and sent them for approval from Environment Ministry before moving ahead for conducting their Environment Impact Assessment studies to be followed by acquisition of land.

High Court had ordered to select a new alternate site to free Mohali’s industrial hub from garbage dump, which Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal had already ordered to shift till June 2009 but to no avail as yet.

In Panchkula, the illegal garbage dumping at 10 acres vacant site in Sector 23 is continuing for the past over five years. The foul smell and smoke of garbage burning from the dumping ground has made hell the life of Sector 23-28 residents, forcing them to form a Joint Action Committee (JAC) for pressing the administration to shift the dumping ground. It was after the area residents, led by JAC president SS Gill, recently took to the streets that the district administration asked the civic body and Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) to not let dumping of garbage in open but to dig pits and level them after dumping garbage. However, this also failed to make any difference. 

Admitting that both HUDA and MC had so far failed to find a permanent solution to the grave problem of the public, former Panchkula MC president Ravinder Rawal suggested that till an alternate site is found, the dumping ground should be shifted to Jhuriwala site with immediate effect to free the inhabited area from pollution.