Chandigarh gets into action for Swachh Survekshan 2022

From a dedicated project management team to creating an “atmanirbhar” ward to bringing in behavioural change regarding sanitation, the Chandigarh municipal corporation (MC) has started implementing a comprehensive plan to ensure a major turnaround for the city in the Swachh Survekshan 2022 (SS22).

In the Swachh Survekshan 2021, Chandigarh’s rank dropped from 8 to 16 among 48 cities with population above 10 lakhs, and overall, it stood at a lowly 66th rank in the country. Its score also dipped from 83% to 71%.

The issue went on to become a major issue in the MC election, with parties indulging in blame game over the city’s poor show in rankings.

Changing its strategy from the past years, the MC is now working to improve the city’s performance on all the 150-odd parameters in the survey.

“The thrust areas of the plan are to give a major uplift to ground-level garbage management infrastructure, make citizens active participants in the city’s sanitation and create an institutional setup, within the MC, dedicated to issues related to the Swachh Survekshan,” said MC commissioner Anindita Mitra.

The SS22 will be undertaken for the period April 2021 to March 2022. Actionable points have to be done by December 31. The deadline for completion of the documentation is January 31. The Survekshan will be done after February 15 when onsite survey will be done by the Centre’s independent teams.

Under the survey, cities’ performance is assessed on 150 parameters, in six segments.

Notably, in a meeting last month, UT adviser Dharam Pal had fixed responsibility of different UT department regarding Survekshan.

Dedicated team

The MC has created a project management team, drawing people with the desired skill-set from the MC and Chandigarh Smart City Ltd.

“Our field teams of engineering department and medical officer of health (MOH) are the implementing agencies and are accountable for successful execution of different works. We cannot expect them to create awareness among the people or do the Swachh Survekshan related documentation. For that, we needed a dedicated team. So, we created a project management team,” said Mitra.

Every member of the team has been given a set of parameters and topics on which they have to monitor the performance of departments on a daily basis. So, parameters like door-to-door garbage collection, segregation and public engagement have been given to different members of the team to monitor and report on. They will also undertake gap analysis to point out the lacunas in the implementation process. The team is also responsible for public engagement on every parameter.

An important component of the Survekshan is documentation. In previous years, many of the mandatory documents were not even submitted to the central Survekshan team by the MC. “We are taking this very seriously this time, and PMT members have been made responsible for documentation regarding each parameter,” said Mitra.

Improving ground-level infrastructure

An “Atmanirbhar” ward is being created in ward 20 (old ward) to ensure that all the wet waste is being processed within the ward. For this, bulk waste generators are undertaking onsite wet waste processing.

“There are seven schools here. We are organising competition among them, for best onsite composting. They are completing their capacity building. In Sanjay Colony and Colony 4, we are giving them home composting buckets. This is being done under CSR (corporate social responsibility). Religious organisations in the ward have also agreed to compost wet waste like flowers,” said Mitra.

The MC has also revived the bio-methane plant, which was lying defunct for more than two years, to process the wet waste in the ward.

For segregation, the two-bin MC door-to-door garbage vehicles are being converted into four-bin. In addition to dry, wet and hazardous waste, the MC will also collect sanitary waste in these vehicles now. The MC also launched 80 additional garbage collection vehicles covering the entire city.

Major push on people’s involvement

The MC is organising a number of programmes and competitions to create awareness among citizens. With themes related to garbage management, MC is holding poster competition, jingle competition, mural competition and street play competition in Maloya.

To encourage home composting, the MC is organising a competition among residents’ welfare associations. “It is to identify who are already skilled in-home composting. The winning entry will get ₹1 lakh prize,” said Mitra.

Swachh Innovative Technology Challenge has been started for engineering colleges and technocrat for creating innovative ideas for garbage management and processing.

In collaboration with an NGO Green Dream Foundation, mural will be created at four sites where “Swachhta ki Kahani” will be created by December-end.

Angadwadi workers are being tapped in to create awareness people to segregate sanitary waste.