Solid Waste Management Bigger Concern Than Toilets: Minister
Underlining the importance of solid waste management for ensuring a clean Urban India over the next two years, Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri will reach out to all the Residential Welfare Associations (RWAs) in the national capital urging them to ensure segregation of municipal waste at the source of its generation.
In his meeting with the senior officials of his ministry and NDMC, representatives of Market Association, general public and sanitation workers, he expressed serious concern over the garbage crisis in Delhi.
“Toilet building is much easier but solid waste management is the real challenge to ensure a clean Urban India by 2019. As against the target of building 66 lakh individual household toilets in urban areas, about 37 lakh units have already been built. With 56% of the mission target already met, this exercise is on course. About 65 million tons of solid waste is generated per year in cities and towns of the country and this is the real challenge. Solid waste processing has reached about one quarter of the generation," Puri said.
He added that: "current efforts to ensure processing of total solid waste will be successful if only segregation of waste at source is ensured as this is necessary for the success of further chain of making compost and power from municipal waste. I would like to reach out to all RWAs in Delhi by writing to them in all the 11 districts to do needful to ensure such segregation. At present, only half of the waste generated in Delhi is being processed and this is a matter of concern”.
The Ministry has earlier this week approved a Rs.300 cr action plan for procuring modern equipment and systems for making a visible impact on solid waste management by which 670 ton per day waste processing capacity would be created by the end of December this year.
