Patna, Nov. 24: The first phase of Patna solid waste management project entailing proper treatment of garbage and generation of power from it would be completed in one-and-a-half years.

Urban development and housing department minister Samrat Choudhary made this announcement while laying the foundation stone of the Rs 249-crore solid waste management project. “The plan entails generation of 7 to 10MW of power by recycling the garbage,” Choudhary said, adding that the waste treatment plant would come over a 75-acre plot at Ramchak Bairiya on the southern fringes of the city.

At present, garbage is dumped at the identified plot but no processing is done. While garbage treatment would take at least another 18 months time to start, an efficient trash collection system would be in place much earlier. Patna deputy mayor Rup Narayan Mehta said door-to-door collection of garbage would start in two months.

Now residents dump garbage at identified points, from where the teams of the civic body collect trash. The collected waste is dumped at the garbage dumping ground at Ramchak Bairiya.

In addition to the garbage treatment plant, Choudhary laid foundation stones for the ambitious electronic traffic signal project, installation of CCTV cameras at different points and introduction of LEDs (light-emitting diodes) as streetlights in the city. The minister claimed that these projects would be operational by March next year.

At present, the Patna traffic is managed manually because the installed traffic signals have become defunct and efforts to repair them have proved futile.

As regards the LED project, the minister claimed that 5,000 LEDs would be provided for Patna. The contract for fitting 1,000 of them had already been awarded and they would become functional by March.

Residents were not convinced though. “This minister just keeps on making announcements. Projects in Bihar seldom get completed on time. All these seem mere eyewash nowadays,” Kankerbagh resident Dharmendra Kumar said.