PuriNew Delhi, Nov 30 (PTI) The Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM)needs to become a mass movement with the participation ofevery stakeholder, Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri saidtoday.
He was speaking at a conference organised by the CII hereon PPP model for waste to energy projects.
Urban areas of Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Chandigarh,Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh,Andaman and Nicobar, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli have achievedOpen Defecation Free (ODF) status. This is a "majorachievement", Puri said, noting that over 1,789 cities havebeen declared ODF.
The mission has attained great momentum, which isreflected in the commitment of all 4,041 cities and towns tobecome ODF by December 2018, much before the envisionedtimeline, he said.
"The Swachh Bharat Mission, which aims to make India aclean and open defecation free nation by October 2019, needsto become a 'Jan Andolan' with participation from everystakeholder. We have taken up a multi-pronged strategy formaking the mission a people's movement," he said.
With India generating nearly 62 lakh million tonnesper annum of municipal solid waste, the minister said that itwas critical to manage and realise the potential of thiswaste.
Puri said that it was important that India looked atwaste as a resource and not as garbage that should bediscarded at a landfill site.
"Overflowing landfill sites are leading to air, landand water pollution in addition to loss of valuable wealththat could have been extracted from the waste," he added. PTIMPANB.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.