The Punjab Government on Wednesday urged the Centre to include three of its flagship solid waste management projects under the ‘Swachh Bharat Mission’ and release 20 per cent of their total cost amounting to Rs53.67 crore, as admissible under the Clean India programme. A request in this regard has been made in an official letter written by the state local Bodies Minister Anil Joshi to the Union Minister of Urban Development M Venkaiah Naidu.
“It is brought to your kind notice that Punjab has developed an end-to-end solution to manage solid waste in all Urban local Bodies of the state,” said Joshi in his letter pointing that the entire state had been divided into eight clusters for managing solid waste on scientific basis to ensure 100 per cent coverage of urban areas. Each cluster will have integrated Solid Waste Management Project for all UlBs of that cluster, Joshi said. He added that the projects were structured on Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode for a fixed concession period of 25 years.
Out of these eight clusters, three clusters at Bathinda, Ferozepur and Jalandhar are already under implementation stage and were approved before Swachh Bharat Mission, the minister said in his letter. He added that the total outlay of these three projects works to be Rs268.39 crore and covered almost 40 percent of total urban population of State.
Seeking liberal help from the Centre, Joshi said that these three projects, however, were not funded either by the state government or any other external agency and have never been part of any scheme announced earlier by any agency and concerned UlBs were providing funds from their own resources which were insufficient to meet the entire expenditure.
Joshi, seeking the inclusion of these points in the Swachch Bharat Mission, requested the Union Minister that these three projects should be included as new projects under Swachh Bharat Mission and 20 percent of the total project cost of these three amounting to Rs53.67 crore as admissible under Swachh Bharat Mission be released to us to put the same on strong footing.