In the first General House meeting after the Municipal Elections, the house approved the repair of Dadu Majra waste processing plant at the cost of Rs 6.33 crores. The agenda was passed through voting in the house.
Municipal Commissioner Anindita Mitra said that it is important to fix the plant as the new waste to energy plany would take time and repairing the existing plant was the need of the hour.
The agenda was brought after UT Administrator visited the plant three months ago and ordered its solution within the next three months.
The plant was operated by private firm Jai Prakash Associates. A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between Municipal Corporation and JP Associates for setting up a Garbage Processing Plant at Chandigarh on built, operate and transfer basis. The agreement was signed between MC and JP Associates in December 2005. The plant started functioning in 2008 with a capacity of processing 500 MT of waste without segregation.
After 2016, rhe plant was not properly maintained or operated as the demand of tipping fee by the company became a point of contention between MC and the company. With time, the quantity of processed waste reduced to 100 Tonnes and the rest of the waste had to be sent to dumping ground.
MC and the company were also involved in a legal case over the matter, and finally, in June 2020, the plant was taken over by MC with the termination of contract. Since then, the dry and wet waste plant is run by MC with the mixed waste processing unit not functioning due to non-operational machinery.
Currently, IIT Ropar has been assigned with the task to study the municipal solid waste in the city and provide a request for proposal for setting up a waste to energy plant.IIT Ropar has submitted a preliminary draft report. It was observed that setting up of Waste to Energy Plant is going to take time, the current processing plant needs to be functional till then.
