Progress of waste removal from Ghazipur landfill not satisfactory, says Delhi CM Kejriwal

New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday said progress of the clearance of garbage from the Ghazipur landfill site is “not satisfactory”.

Interacting with reporters after a visit to the massive dump, the chief minister said he suggested that “two more agencies” should be hired to speed up the work once the Municipal Corporation of Delhi’s (MCD) standing committee is in place.

He said three companies in a joint venture have been tasked with processing the waste at the landfill site.

However, since the start of work on the project, the agencies “have been at loggerheads”, the chief minister said, adding that the progress of garbage removal from the landfill site is “not satisfactory at all”.

“There is already a plan to hire another agency, so I have told them to hire two agencies instead of one so that the work can pick up speed and we can clear out this mountain of garbage as soon as possible,” Kejriwal added.

The chief minister said once the standing committee is in place and provides clearance to hire two new agencies, “we will think if the current agencies are to be retained or not”.

“I have been told that the MCD has done its paperwork, pending the standing committee’s approval,” he added.

The civic officials had earlier said the deadline to flatten the Ghazipur landfill is December 2024.

In 2019, the height of the Ghazipur landfill was 65 metres, only eight metres lower than the Qutub Minar. In 2017, a portion of waste from the Ghazipur landfill had fallen on an adjacent road, killing two people.

The Chief Minister’s Office later in a statement said Kejriwal is “deeply



concerned” about freeing Delhi from these “mountains of garbage”.

“In the last few days I have been to the Bhalswa and the Okhla landfill sites … Progress of removal of this (Ghazipur landfill) garbage is significantly slow. As per the scheduled target, 15 lakh tons of garbage should have been removed from the site. But, so far, only 5.25 lakh tons of garbage have been removed,” the statement quoted Kejriwal as saying.

To ensure that the targets are met on time, the chief minister has “directed the MCD to hire two more agencies”, it added.

Kejriwal later posted a short clip on X and said, “Today I went to see the garbage removal work going on at the Ghazipur landfill site. The work here is progressing slowly, which is not satisfactory. To expedite the work at this site, the MCD will need to deploy two more agencies.”

The AAP had made clearance of the three landfill sites one of its poll planks ahead of the civic elections in December, which it won by a comfortable margin.

Kejriwal on Wednesday visited the Okhla landfill site and said the work to process and remove the waste from the dump is running behind the projected target.

His visit to the Okhla landfill site came days after an inspection of the Bhalaswa landfill site on September 30.

The Okhla landfill site contained 45 lakh tons of waste. Work began last November to gradually process and remove it and a target was set to remove 30 lakh tons by May 2024, Kejriwal said on Wednesday.

“But this work is running slightly behind the projected target. Till date, about 18 lakh tons was to be removed, but 12 lakh tons has been removed,” he said.