Speed Post News Network
New Delhi : Minister of State (I/C) for Housing and Urban Affairs, Hardeep S, Puri, on May 19, 2020, informed that for the assessment year 2019-2020, a total of six cities have been certified as 5-Star (Ambikapur, Rajkot, Surat, Mysuru, Indore, and Navi Mumbai), 65 cities as 3-Star, and 70 cities as 1-Star.
While announcing the results of the Star Rating of Garbage Free Cities here ton May 19, Puri also launched the revised protocol for the Star Rating of Garbage Free Cities at the event. The Star Rating Protocol was launched by the Ministry in January 2018 to institutionalise a mechanism for cities to achieve Garbage Free status, and to motivate cities to achieve higher degrees of cleanliness. Durga Shanker Mishra, Secretary, Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs, and senior officials of the Ministry were also present.
Addressing the media, Puri said, “The importance of sanitation and effective solid waste management has been brought to the forefront now due to the COVID crisis. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the present situation could have been much worse had it not been for the critical part that SBM-U has played in the last five years to ensure a high degree of cleanliness and sanitation in urban areas. Five years ago, we introduced Swachh Survekshan (SS), the annual cleanliness survey for urban India, that has proven immensely successful when it comes to improving urban cleanliness through a spirit of healthy competition. However, since it is a ranking system, several of our cities, despite doing exceptionally well, were not being recognised appropriately.”
Puri added, ” The Ministry, therefore, devised the Star Rating Protocol for Garbage Free Cities – a comprehensive framework similar to our examination systems- where each ward in every city must achieve a certain standard across 24 different components of solid waste management (SWM) and is graded based on overall marks received.”
Additionally, in the light of the COVID crisis, MoHUA has issued detailed guidelines to all States and cities on special cleaning of public places and collection and disposal of bio-medical waste from quarantined households. MoHUA, in the first week of April, also revised its hugely popular citizen grievance redressal platform, Swacchata App, in order to enable citizens to get their COVID-related issues also redressed by their respective ULBs.
Puri added, “My Ministry is aware of the adverse impact in terms of financial stress during lockdown. A Special Micro-Credit facility for the Street Vendors to facilitate easy access is being launched to support nearly 50 lakh vendors. Similarly, to mitigate the hardships of urban migrants be it workers in manufacturing industries etc, Affordable Rental Housing Complexes (AHRCs) is being launched.”
Since its launch in 2014, Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban (SBM-U) has made significant progress in the area of both sanitation and solid waste management. Altogether 4,324 Urban Local Bodies have been declared ODF till date. Moreover, 66 lakh individual household toilets and over 6 lakhs community/ public toilets have been constructed/ or are under construction.