Wednesday, 02 March 2022 | PNS | Dehradun
The Municipal Corporation of Haridwar (MCH) has claimed that it will make the city garbage-free by the end of this month in order to improve the ranking of the city in Swachch Survekshan 2022 (SS22) organised by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA). The corporation has already started establishing five garbage transfer stations in order to ensure proper transfer and disposal of garbage generated in all wards. Haridwar had fared poorly in the past two editions of Swachch Survekshan due to which, the corporation is leaving no stone unturned to put efforts to collect all the possible scores in all categories of this national survey. The city is mainly focusing on acing the ratings under the Garbage-Free City (GFC) category this year as garbage accumulation in open areas is among the major concern of sanitation in most of the cities of the state. None of the cities in the state have scored three-star or five-star ratings and even Dehradun, Roorkee and Muni ki Reti were able to get only the lowest one-star rating in SS21. However, the municipal commissioner of Haridwar, Dayanand Saraswati has claimed that the city will be made garbage-free by the end of this month. According to him, the corporation has been working to improve the sanitation facilities of Haridwar for over the past six months. He said, “Several steps have been taken to work on every factor associated with cleanliness to improve the sanitation conditions across the city. Proper door to door garbage collection is being carried out in all 60 wards while ensuring garbage segregation at the source for its proper disposal. The corporation also inspects commercial spaces regularly to prevent the use of single-use plastics.” He also informed that there were about 40 garbage points across the city where the collected garbage were dumped and shifted from a certain area to the waste management and recycling plant but the corporation has decided to remove this system. “We have started establishing five garbage transfer stations from where garbage will directly be transferred to the waste management plant. All the five stations are being constructed in a way that no garbage would be visible after being dumped there before its transfer to the plant. The construction work will be finished in a few days and garbage will be transferred through these stations rather than several other garbage points without being openly visible to others,” said the commissioner. He also stated that MCH is also encouraging composting of biodegradable materials in temples and so far, eight temples have adopted composting in the city. Besides this, the corporation is also consistently working in raising awareness among locals about SS22 and to give their feedback under the Citizen’s Feedback subcategory this month. Saraswati said that MCH is putting all efforts to attain a good ranking this year and appealed to the locals to contribute to this survey by maintaining cleanliness and giving their valuable feedback for their city in SS22.
