Five more States mainly Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Haryana have reached the milestone of making all cities and towns ‘Open Defecation Free’ as the Swacch Bharat Mission completed three years on Monday.
This was announced by the Union Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri while speaking at a programme in New Delhi on the occasion of the third anniversary of the mission on Monday.
Giving an account of the progress towards Swacchata in urban areas of the country, Puri informed that as against the target of building about 66 lakh individual household toilets in urban areas, 38 lakh toilets have already been built and construction of another 14 lakh toilets is in progress. Over two lakh community and public toilet seats have been built as against the mission target of five lakh toilet seats.
Stating that focus in now being laid on Solid Waste Management, Shri Puri said that efforts are on to generate over 500 MW of electricity and over 50 lakh tons of compost from municipal solid waste to enable processing of the entire solid waste being generated in urban areas.
Shri Puri said that sanitation is a birth right and individual responsibility as well. He informed that the fortnight long ‘Swacchata Hi Sewa’ campaign concluding today has witnessed participation of over 80 lakh people spread over 3.50 lakh activities in urban areas.
The Minister stressed on the need for ‘life style change’ to realise the objective of Swacch Bharat as envisioned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Notably, the Chhattisgarh Government has included all the 168 Urban local Bodies of Chhattisgarh under ‘Cleanliness Survey-2018’ as per the directives of Union Urban Development Ministry, officials informed.
Notably, the Ministry will provide a ‘Cleanliness Ranking’ to the UlBs across the country.
Dhamtari district of Chhattisgarh was ranked 12th in the country with a score of 87.4 out of 100 in Union Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation’s ‘Swachch Survekshan 2016-Gramin” (Cleanliness Survey 2016-Rural).
Notably, the Raipur Municipal Corporation (RMC) in March last year decided to adopt a mobile-based application for bringing about significant improvement in cleanliness arrangement across the city by ensuring proper monitoring and evaluation of sanitation work.
Initially, the civic body is going to use the application ‘Fit Port’ developed a software company Competent Groove on a trial basis, averred RMC officials, adding that based on findings of month-long trial, the Corporation will take the decision of adopting the application.
On the other hand, the Raipur Municipal Corporation (RMC) will be taking up an ‘Integrated Municipal Solid Waste Management Project’ through Public Private Partnership (PPP) model soon.
The PPP model would be based on Design, Build, Finance, Operate and Transfer ( DBFOT ) basis, officials informed.
Notably, Chhattisgarh has two ‘waste-to-energy’ power plants proposed with a total installed capacity of 10 MW.
Notably, five Municipal Solid Wastes (MSW) to energy plants with a cumulative installed capacity of 66.5 MW are currently operational/under trial run in the country.
The Chhattisgarh government has decided to set up a ‘Waste to Energy’ power generation plant in Durg district.
The Government intends to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP) administration for jointly taking up the project, officials informed.
The project is proposed to be undertaken under ‘Swachch Bharat Abhiyan’ under the Government’s solid waste management project.
The proposed ‘Waste to Energy’ plant would utilise waste generated from municipal corporations of Bhilai, Durg, Bhilai-Charoda, two municipal councils mainly Jamul and Kumhari and three Nagar Panchayats mainly Utai, Patan and Gunderdehi.