CHANDIGARH: In an ambitious project to collect garbage door to-door in all towns and cities and use that to produce energy, the Punjab government has started work to set up eight “mega garbage treatment plants” in the public-private partnership mode.
To begin with, the Local Bodies Department has initiated the set ting up of three such solid waste management plants in Jalandhar, Ludhiana and Ferozepur “clusters”, which would cover all municipal bodies in their respective zones, Minister Manoranjan Kalia said in a statement issued here on Tuesday ..
Under the project, all urban local bodies, including the municipal corporations of Amritsar, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Patiala and Bathinda and the civic bodies in adjoining smaller towns, have been clubbed into eight clusters – Amritsar, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Ferozepur, Bathinda, Pathankot, Patiala and GMADA (Mohali).
The collection and transportation of garbage in Jalandhar would begin by December 2010, Kalia said, pointing out that the final tender document for the cluster would be issued by the end of this month.
Kalia hoped the Ludhiana project would be awarded by January 2011, while the remaining would be operational by the end of March 2011.
The government has received 14 expressions of interest (EGIs) for the Ludhiana cluster, 13 for Jalandhar and 12 for Ferozepur in the first phase of the project, which has 00 be completed by 20l1-end.
Kalia said Punjab was the first to take up solid-waste management at the state level, for which the Department of Local Government had worked out a comprehensive scheme. Garbage would be collected from every urban household, segregated, and processed at a central place, turned into fuel for power generation or compost for agricultural use. The residue would also be disposed of scientifically.
The IL&FS Infrastructure Development Corporation was assisting the government in developing the cluster projects and selecting experienced private operators, the minister said.
SOURCE-HT
