Waste-to-energy plants, bio-mining are solutions to flatten landfills: Atishi

Delhi government has offered people free water, medicine, electricity, while MCD doesn’t even have the money to pay its employees, says Atishi

Senior AAP leader Atishi talks about how an AAP-run Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) will get rid of the three landfills and deliver on the promises made during the campaign for civic polls scheduled on December 4. Excerpts:

Q / In his recent visit to the Ghazipur landfill, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has a blueprint to flatten the landfills. Could you share some details?

A / The problem right now is that more garbage is reaching the landfill sites than is being processed. This can be dealt with in two ways. The first is to ensure the segregation of waste at the source so that it does not reach the landfills. This is the most important part. The second is to start waste-to-energy [WTE] plants and bio-mining. WTE plants are used for this purpose across the world. 

Q / Does the blueprint include any other plans?

A / That blueprint can only come once we are in the MCD. On paper, the MCD claims to have many of these provisions, for which it has also allocated funds and staff. But we’re not seeing this happen on the ground. How many WTE plants has the BJP installed in the last 15 years?

Q / AAP has also promised to improve MCD-run schools. How will you do that?

A / We already have a blueprint for this. Schools run by the Delhi government were improved when we came to power [in the Legislative Assembly]. We have started nurseries and kindergartens in all the Delhi government-run primary schools. We’ll start these in the MCD-run schools also. We will also introduce ‘Happiness Curriculum’, activity-based curriculum etc., taught in Delhi government schools, to the schools run by the municipality.