The Swachch Bharat Mission, a brain child of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and is implemented throughout the country rigorously by Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. Under the scheme, Swachch Sarvekshan (cleanliness surveys) is carried out in major cities, wherein marks are given to cities on different parameters.
Coming to Nagpur, the city’s performance was not good as compared to last year.
In 2018, Nagpur scored 2834.95 marks out of 4000 ranking 55 out of 471 cities. However, this year, it scored 3160.31 marks out of 5000 marks ranking 58 out of 425 cities. This year, Nagpur ranked 18th in Maharashtra out of 43 cities, whereas it had bagged 10th position last year.
According to Surbhi Jaiswal, Team Lead, Green Vigil Foundation, an NGO that works for awareness on cleanliness drive and conducts various other programmes, one of the reasons for city’s dissatisfactory performance was late beginning of the campaign.
This year’s score is as follows
Direct Observation 1138/1250
Citizen Feedback, 934.7/ 1250
Service Level Progress 537.61/1250
Certification 550/1250, which contained two sub categories
1 star rating where Nagpur scored 2 stars with 300 marks
And 2 ODS (Open defecation free) 200 marks out of 250
The service level progress is bifurcated in two major categories that of collection of municipal solid waste that got 27 per cent and processing and disposing of waste that got 30 per cent.
“This is the area where we scored very less. The city generates 1200 metric tonnes of solid waste per day, but there is no treatment plant and hence we could not score,” Surbhi lamented.
On sustainable sanitation, Nagpur scored 25 per cent with the city having good number of toilets, adequate water supply and electricity too.
On other fronts like IEC that is information, education and communication about cleanliness, the city scored 5 per cent with 3 per cent on capacity.
However, there was no innovation this year. Last year, under the best practice innovation, GPS watches were distributed to all NMC workers and sanitation workers. This helped to record their time duration, GPS tracked that they were on the site and were working. That was not the case this year.
This year, the campaign took momentum only after November 2018 when Abhijit Bangar took over as Commissioner, Surbhi said. Hence there were only three months left. However, she was also praise for the municipal commissioner, saying that within a short period it was Mr. Bangar’s efforts that the city could achieve such a score. Ideally, the campaign should begin by April and efforts should be made to involve maximum citizens that would ensure best possible results, she opined.
