10 Dadumajra residents to accompany 19 Chandigarh councillors to Goa to learn about waste management plant

Commissioner of the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation Anindita Mitra said, “They are visiting to understand the basic functioning of an Integrated Solid Waste Management Plant. The technology adopted by Chandigarh is similar to the one in Goa. Also, there are several apprehensions of odour and other environmental issues, hence this would be an opportunity for everybody to see a similar plant.”

Setting aside AAP and Congress concerns about the waste treatment plant in Dadumajra, Chandigarh administrator Banwarilal Purohit Monday approved the installation of the plant.

As per details, the Opposition councillors had sought an audience with Purohit after an agenda for setting up the waste plant in Dadumajra was passed during a Chandigarh Municipal Corporation House meeting recently.

The Opposition councillors had, during the June 6 meeting, been marshalled out on orders of UT Mayor Anup Gupta after they engaged in a verbal spat with Chandigarh MP Kirron Kher. And since then, Congress and the AAP had been saying that they have not been heard even as there was such an important agenda.

Purohit added that the plant’s design has been approved by National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), which has expertise of having worked on several such projects in the country, including in Goa.

During Monday’s meeting, the UT Administrator had asked the councillors to suggest if there was another piece of land that was big enough to set up the waste treatment plant. Purohit was told by the councillors that there is no area in Chandigarh where a 50 acre land was available to set up the plant. He then said that according to Chandigarh’s 1987 Master Plan, Dadumajra has been demarcated for the waste plant.