After registering significant place in Swacchta Sarvekshan – 2018 by bagging a few coveted titles, Jharkhand yet again has created history on sanitation frontage. The State Urban Development Agency (SUDA) on Friday has been conferred with the prestigious ‘SKOCH ORDER OF MERIT’ at New Delhi. The honour was given to the Government of Jharkhand (GoJ) for three innovative proposals sent by SUDA recently.
The three proposals given by SUDA are construction of skill development center cum community toilets, Google toilets locator including introducing reverse vending machines. A proposal sent by Directorate of Municipal Administration ‘Strategic Planning and implementation of PMAY-U’ also received the honor in the 52nd edition of ‘SKOCH ORDER OF MERIT’ awards ceremony.
A total of five ‘SKOCH ORDER OF MERIT’ awards were bestowed to Jharkhand for undertaking quite a number of sanitation tasks alongwith spreading awareness among the denizens. Besides ‘SKOCH AWARD FOR GOVERNANCE’, the initiatives taken under the aegis of Urban Development Department, the proposal of ‘Scrap festival and sanitation flying squad’ tabled by Jamshedpur Scheduled Area received the honour during the felicitation ceremony.
Adopting a new measure for maintaining the community toilets, the steps taken by the State government is commendable stated the experts present on the occasion. The funds collected from the Skill Development Training Centers are being utilized for maintaining the community toilets. Furthermore, with an aim to inculcate the habit of toilet use among all class despite of the barrier like locating a near-by toilet, the idea of the State government of installing Google locators in public toilets gained applaud of the jury members.
Also, the most recent initiative of decking up reverse vending machines for thrashing plastic bottles, one of the major pollutants have captured the attention of the experts during the selection of innovative proposals. As of now, at three districts – Ranchi, Jamshedpur and Dhanbad, the reverse vending machines have been installed at a few prominent spots where persons using these machines for discarding plastic bottles are getting free prize coupons while encouraging other to discard the hazardous products at a proper disposable place without adding on the pollution.
On behalf of Department of Urban Development, Housing and Planning, Social Development Expert of SUDA, Anjali Tigga while a representative of Directorate of Municipal Administration, Rajan received the awards.