Thursday, 30 December 2021 | PNS | Dehradun
The Municipal Corporation of Dehradun (MCD) will start promoting composting in rural areas of the city to reduce garbage accumulation in order to score maximum scores in Citizen’s Feedback category under Swacchh Survekshan 2022 (SS22) which is scheduled to commence from January 1. The corporation has started making preparation to get into the top 50 cleanest cities in the category of cities with 1-10 lakh population after getting into the top 100 cities in SS21 with 82nd rank. However, scoring maximum marks in this category can be challenging for the MCD this time due to the changes made by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA). This year, the ministry has changed the pattern of the questionnaire and introduced two sub categories- Youth and Senior Citizens, to specifically collect the feedback from the youths aged 15 years to 29 years and senior citizens regarding the sanitation facilities in their city. According to the SS22 toolkit document issued by MoHUA, the Citizen’s Feedback category holds 600 marks out of which 400 marks will be given to senior citizens’ feedback. The ‘youths’ sub-category holds 200 marks but only its 50 per cent weightage will be added to the final score while the remaining weightage will be given to the feedback received from the citizens of other age groups. Since zero marks will be given for negative feedback, the civic body has started to tackle the prominent issue of garbage accumulation and its disposal in the city to get a good score.
The officials said that the corporation is primarily focussing on the disposal of the garbage generated in the city as it received only a one-star rating in the Garbage Free City (GFC) category in SS21 and it is also an important part of the Citizen’s Feedback category this time.
“We have started training locals in some rural areas to dispose of their domestic waste through composting to use it as manure in fields. We will soon start promoting composting in all the rural areas with the help of respective councillors. Also, the MCD is planning to promote composting among eateries that generate tonnes of waste in a single day,” said senior municipal officer RK Singh. He said that Dehradun received over four lakh feedbacks in SS21 and the MCD has aimed to hit over five lakh feedbacks this time. He said, “There are some additional challenges this year but the corporation will leave no stone unturned to improve the ranking in SS22. I appeal to the locals to give their feedback from January 1 to February 28 as per their experience.”
