Horticultural department to sign MoU with Chennai Corporation for this purpose
Posted on: 29/Aug/2018 10:07:09 AM
The news that the horticultural department of the state would become the first and major customer by purchasing tonnes of compost made from waste has been the talk of the town. By this the horticultural department would save amount of Rs 16 lakh per year as they could purchase compost from the local bodies instead of private sources. The horticultural department would sign memorandum of understanding or MoU with all the local bodies in TN to buy manure made from household wastes.
The superb piece of news is on Monday the horticultural department would sign its first MoU with corporation of Chennai for procuring 40 tonnes of manure as the first consignment. Ten tonnes of manure would be purchased by the department every month and it would be purchased at Rs 10000 per tonne. It is important to mention that this manure purchased by the horticultural department would be sent to all farms present in and around Chennai city.
According to Mr. N. Subbaiyan, director of horticultural department, the above mentioned farms would be the collection points and from these locations the compost would be sent to other farms. For a distance of 50km, the local body would bear the cost for transporting the compost and later the department of horticulture would take over. This was confirmed by the executive engineer of the Chennai Corporation, D. Vijula. There are as many as 61 farms and 18 parks and gardens across the state of TN and these belong to the horticultural department.
These above mentioned farms and parks purchase 400 tonnes of waste from private companies and make 100 tonnes at their farms. There are as many as 20000 hectares of horticultural farms in and around Chennai and 15 lakh hectares of horticultural farms across TN.
Mr. Subbaiyan spoke about how terrace gardening and urban agriculture are being promoted and how the demand for compost is huge now. He later highlighted that both local bodies and horticultural department would be benefited by this association if the local bodies provide the compost as per the norms and standards. He added that compost packets would be sold directly and later online process would be used to sell the compost.
It is revealed that the corporation engineers who are in-charge of waste composting centres would be playing a big role in ensuring the nutrient requirement of the compost and they would arrive at the specifications. An official hinted that the department would act as an outlet for the sale of compost.
