Ghaziabad bags 13th spot in Swachh Survekshan rankings

Ghaziabad city has secured the 13th position in the national rankings of the Swachh Survekshan, 2019 — the results of which were announced by the Union ministry of housing and urban affairs on Wednesday.

A total of 425 urban local bodies from across the country had participated in this year’s Swachh Survekshan.

Ghaziabad has improved a lot as is evident from its ranking from last year, when the city had the 351st position nationally. This year, the city also topped the list of 64 cities in Uttar Pradesh included in the ranking. In 2018, the city had bagged the second position in the state.

“The rankings have improved and it is a result of the hard work of our team which took initiatives for cleanliness. We have been able to achieve the open defecation-free (ODF) status and also door-to-door collection of solid waste which helped improve rankings,” municipal commissioner Dinesh Chandra said.

The city has already inducted services of door-to-door garbage collection in the residential wards and constructed community and public toilets for improved cleanliness. Night sweeping activities in nearly 24 market areas during night was also initiated this year, officials said.

In the survey, the city secured a score of 3,877.43 points against a total of 5,000 points. The score is well above the national average of 1,846 points and the state average of 1,724.74 points. Of a score of 1,250 for direct observation during field surveys, the city secured 1,201 points; 983.28 of 1250 points for service level progress; 993.15 of 1,250 points as part of citizens’ feedback and 700 of 1250 points for certification (star rating for garbage-free cities and open defecation-free protocols). However, in the middle of the Swachh Survekshan, 2019, in January, the city faced a major setback when the UP solid waste monitoring committee, appointed by the National Green Tribunal, stopped Ghaziabad municipal corporation from dumping any solid waste at the dumping site in Pratap Vihar.

“Since then, we have been trying our best to get the land in Galand and some land registries in our favour are yet to be executed. This will be done soon. However, we did not stop daily collection activities. We have procured land in different areas for dumping of solid waste and also resorting to composting of wet waste. A major share of solid waste is also sent to Pilkhuwa for processing,” Chandra maintained.

According to a conservative official estimate, the city produces about 860 metric tonne of daily solid waste. Of this, nearly 300 metric tonne is sent to Pilkhuwa’s waste-to-compost plant.

First Published: Mar 07, 2019 04:45 IST