20L tones of garbage lying unprocessed at Naregaon

Aurangabad, Jan 21:

The state government had approved the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation's (AMC) detailed project report (DPR) on garbage management. It includes disposal of 20 lakh tones of garbage lying in the old depot at Naregaon. However, for want of 52 per cent fund from the state government, the civic body cannot undertake scientific processing huge quantity of the garbage, said the sources.

AMC unloaded the above quantity of garbage from 1985 to 2018. The civic body experimented by dumping waste at the site through landfill in 2010 and left the remaining stock in the form of heaps at the old site.

Earlier, the court had directed the AMC to dispose of the garbage through scientific processing within one year. It also ordered to erect fencing. Later on, the AMC prepared a DPR of Rs 148 crore and decided to dispose of the garbage by capping at Naregaon and then through bio-mining procedure, the ground was to be levelled. The cost of work was exceeding more than Rs 25 crore. Hence the AMC submitted a revised DPR to the state government for approval. The then municipal commissioner and ruling party members in AMC, instead of bio-mining proposed to do screening on garbage claiming that it would be cost-effective. However, no decision is taken upon it, so far.

The delay in disposing of the garbage is amounting to the contempt of the court's order, and also the heaps of garbage are affecting the ranking of the city in Cleanliness Survey, it is said.