In a first, tourist places & schools will come under Swacch Survekshan ambit
NEW DELHI: This year, additional features and indicators have been introduced to make Swachh Survekshan (SS), touted as the world’s largest urban cleanliness survey, sharper, systematic and to have a wider impact. For first time, tourist places, schools and Cleanliness Target Units (CTUs) will be under the ambit of the review.
It is launched by the ministry of housing and urban affairs (MoHUA) with an aim to encourage citizen participation and create awareness among all sections of society about making towns and cities better places. Starting this year, a penalty provision has also been introduced for serious and concentrated efforts for transformation and timely execution of plans.
The CTUs are the dirty spots, which generally remain neglected during routine cleanliness activities and pose serious environmental and health hygiene risk, cleaned during the Swachhata Hi Seva’ (SHS) campaign launched on September 17.
“To inspire young minds to adopt cleanliness and sustainability, school assessments have been introduced. Special focus has also been laid on visible cleanliness and waste management at tourist spots having high footfall,” said officials.
The latest survey is expected to cover more than 32,000 residential areas and an equal number of commercial sites. According to the ministry, about 4,900 urban local bodies will participate this year. At least 6,500 tourist spots including monuments, 25,000 schools and over 11,000 CTUs will be assessed. The officials said that 3,170 remediation sites and more than 77,000 bulk waste generators will also be covered.
“The ministry will closely monitor implementation of projects approved by it to ensure their timely and effective execution. Data accuracy will be verified, and inputs from Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) will be tracked. Sometimes, there are gaps between the data updated by the agencies on the portal and field inspection so therefore to bring in some seriousness and effective assessment, stringent penalties will be enforced in the event of any discrepancies or mismatch in the data,” officials added.
As per the revised SS toolkit released recently by the ministry,10 broad categories for evaluation include access to sanitation, solid waste management, used water management, overall welfare of sanitation workers, segregation, collection and transportation of waste.