GHMC officials said that they had received proposals from the Roads & Buildings Department for disposal of the construction and demolition waste arising out of the demolition of the old Secretariat buildings.
After a PIL has been filed in the High Court with the contention that the Construction and Demolition Waste Management Rules-2016 were being violated by the government which has not submitted a waste management plan to the local authority and sought its approval, GHMC officials claimed that a plan was indeed submitted by R&B department in this regard.
As per the plan submitted, the waste is to be transported to the GHMC’s C&D waste recycling plant functioning at Jeedimetla, Executive Engineer, C&D Waste Management, Mohan Reddy informed. However, he kept mum about when the plan was submitted and whether permission has been granted for the demolition. If transportation is to be undertaken by the R&B department, ₹90 per tonne will be charged by the concessionaire for processing the waste. If the concessionaire is to shift the debris using their own vehicles, the charges will be ₹366 per tonne, another official informed, unwilling to be identified.
Sources from the concessionaire firm Ramky Enviro Engineers Limited have, however, denied receiving any instructions from government asking them to lift the debris. When sought his version, GHMC Commissioner D.S.Lokesh Kumar said R&B department may be contacted over this.
Earlier, R&B Engineer in Chief Ganapathi Reddy had said to this correspondent that they were identifying abandoned quarries near the city to dump the debris.
According to estimates based on the standard norms for calculation, demolition of the 10 buildings in the Secretariat complex, along with three religious structures and a canteen would generate about 2.2 lakh tonnes of debris, which, if piled up to five to six metres height, would need a minimum of seven acres of land.
The single C&D waste processing facility in the city at Jeedimetla has capacity to process 500 tonnes at its best per day. Even if deployed exclusively for processing the Secretariat waste, the plant would need close to two years’ time to finish the work. The city generates an additional 750 to 1,000 tonnnes of C&D waste per day as per estimates, which needs to be processed by this plant.
Though another processing plant is proposed at Fathullaguda near Nagole, it will take longer for establishment, as the machinery is yet to arrive, officials informed.
