Centre has issued funds under various components of Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) to improve the sanitation status of urban areas in Punjab.
The funds, thus received from the Centre under Swachh Bharat Mission for improving solid waste management, has been released to municipal corporation cities of Punjab.
In all, Rs 16.79 crore has been released to nine Municipal Corporation cities in Punjab except ludhiana of which SWM project is already funded under JNNURM.
The state’s local Government Department is implementing Swachh Bharat Mission through its nodal agency — Punjab Municipal infrastructure Company.
The released funds are the first instalment of the Solid Waste Management Funds available under Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban) for Punjab State.
Centre has allocated Rs 221.0 crore during the mission period till October 2019.
The fund flow to the urban local bodies (UlBs) will improve as the funds are utilized by the local bodies.
Punjab Government has constituted a technical committee to finalising the requirements from UlBs and specifying the quantities and specification of Solid Waste Management related machineries and equipments. The funds will be soon released to the other Municipal Council and Nagar Panchayats.
The release of funds will also provide boost to the ongoing cluster level projects for managing Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) of all UlBs of Punjab (India) on Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode for 25 years.
Under this state level MSW management program, entire State of Punjab has been divided into eight MSW Clusters namely, Bathinda, Ferozepur, ludhiana, Jalandhar, Amritsar, Patiala, GMADA, and Pathankot.
Out of the these eight MSW clusters, three are in implementation stage while remaining five MSW clusters are under development stage.