As India grapples with its humongous garbage problem, Indore Municipal Commissioner Asheesh Singh is spearheading a massive clean up programme in Indore.
A 2010-batch IAS officer of the Madhya Pradesh cadre, Asheesh has been able to clear nearly 13 lakh metric tonne of waste, spread over 100 acre of land in a span of six months.
Unlike his predecessors, Singh did not outsource the garbage cleaning work to contractors.
The private agencies were charging Rs 475 per cubic metre, the whole task would have cost over Rs 60-65 crore to the exchequer.
Asheesh took it upon himself to clean the landfill after assuming charge in May,2018.
He realised that the problem was of funding, so instead of outsourcing the whole process, he decided to rent machines for bio-mining.
“Bio-remediation or bio-mining is an environment-friendly technique to separate soil and recyclables like plastic, metal, paper, cloth and other solid materials from legacy waste,” Singh told The Better Indian.
“We operated the machine for 14-15 hours daily using our own resources, and within six months, 13 lakhs of garbage was cleared,” he told theprint.in
Asheesh cleared up the entire area by Dec 5 at much lesser cost of Rs 10 crore. The worth of the land reclaimed by the government is about Rs 400 crore
Asheesh wants to develop the site into a golf course.
