The Manohar lal Khattar Government in Haryana is all set to hire experts from private sector to implement Centre’s ambitious ‘Swachchh Bharat’ mission in the State.
In line with Centre’s project ‘‘Swachchh Bharat Abhiyan’, Haryana Government had launched ‘‘Swachchh Haryana, ‘Swachchh Bharat’ campaign in the year 2014 to achieve total sanitation by October 2, 2019.
Earlier this year, Haryana’s Millennium city — Gurgaon and industrial hub — Faridabad had however failed to impress in terms of cleanliness and were ranked low in the Swachh Survekshan survey unveiled by the Centre.
While Haryana’s capital Chandigarh was ranked second cleanest city, Gurgaon was ranked at 36th position and Faridabad at 51st position in the survey which was conducted in 73 cities of the country.
Gurgaon and Faridabad’s low rankings pointed out weak strategy for stopping open defecation, implementing solid waste management, ensuring sanitation in public and community toilet provisions and waste management processing and disposal.
Haryana Slum Clearance Board (HSCB) was designated as State level nodal agency for Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban). At present, there are 80 urban local bodies (10 municipal corporations, 18 municipal councils and 52 municipal committees) in the State which are headed by Municipal Commissioners and other established officers.
The BJP led State Government had in 2014 also chalked out an action plan and a 20 point programme for the success of ‘Swachh Haryana, Swachh Bharat’ campaign.
However, Haryana’s sanitation programmes have so far failed to achieve the desired targets due to planning weaknesses, lack of coordination among concerned authorities and ineffective awareness programmes.
“Since the HSCB will require significant institutional and management capacity for development and management of the sanitation projects, the State Government will hire services of experts from private sector to implement ‘Swachh Haryana, Swachh Bharat’ campaign,” said a senior official of Haryana Government while talking to The Pioneer.
As per the proposal, the services of a Professional Service Provider (PSP) will be engaged for providing required number of qualified and capable experts/specialists for setting up of one Project Management Unit (PMU) in HSCB at Panchkula and 21 Project Implementing Units (PIUs) at district level for two years and the same can be extended for another one year.
The official said that the HSCB has decided that the project will be developed, implemented and monitored through PMU and PIUs by hiring qualified experts/specialists through a PSP. The PSP would provide qualified and experienced technical experts in PMU and PIUs in accordance with the terms and conditions stated in the agreement to be entered into between the HSCB and the PSP soon, he added.
Each project implementing Unit (PIU) at district level will also take care of all the municipalities falling in the particular district. The PIU will be established in the municipality located at district headquarter.
As per the latest data related to the progress of cleanliness mission during 2015-16, Haryana had set a target to build 52026 individual household toilets while work started on 37348, only 7188 were completed.
It was seen that among the major States, in rural areas, Haryana had the lowest percentage of households with no garbage collection arrangement (24 percent).
Out of 2048 target for building community and public toilets, the state managed to complete 1051. As far as ensuring 100 per cent door to door collection of waste is concerned, Haryana has achieved it in 332 wards out of the set target of 725 wards, stated the data.