As half-burnt particles also cause pollution primarily in winters due to non-supportive weather, the city Government on Thursday launched an ‘Anti-Burning Campaign.’
Environment Minister Gopal Rai also conducted a surprise visit at the Ghazipur landfill in East Delhi and directed the MCD to present an action plan for a foolproof fire control mechanism to avoid future instances of week-long fires.
“The current progress of landfill disposal, is very poor and impractical and the East MCD is severely lacking in its work,” Rai said.
“Given the current levels of pollution in Delhi and the continuous instances of stubble burning from all around contributing to it, the ‘Anti Burning Campaign’ has been started today. The main goal of this is to help cut down on any source of pollution from within the city where open burning of waste, landfills, and the like is taking place. This campaign will run for a month till December 11. Around 10 different departments with a team of 550 people have been given the responsibility to see this campaign through,” Rai said.
In response to enquiries about the disposal of the Ghazipur landfill, Rai said, “The MCD engineers and DPCC scientists have recently presented a report that despite orders by the National Green Tribunal regarding the disposal of the landfill, only 5.5 per cent of the area has been cleared over a span of 2.5 years. At this rate, the disposal of the entire landfill looks tough in my opinion, which they have predicted will take a long cumbersome 13 years, which is completely impractical and unjustified. So the current progress is definitely poor. To accelerate it the MCD needs to come up with a solid action plan. We will also hold a meeting concerning this matter to figure out why the disposal is getting stalled so much.”
He concluded saying he would remind the Centre and State Governments to hold an emergency meeting at the earliest. “Don’t know why they are avoiding it”, he said.