Indore, Jan 11 (PTI) Effective, sustainable and durable waste management system played a big role in Indore securing the top position among the ‘cleanest cities’ of India for the seventh consecutive time on Thursday, civic officials said here.
This time, Indore, known as Madhya Pradesh’s commercial capital, shared the top position with diamond city of Surat in Gujarat in the central government’s annual cleanliness survey for 2023.
The survey, based on the theme ‘Waste to Wealth’, saw a tough competition among more than 4,400 cities in different categories.
The cleanliness survey or Swachh Survekshan was started by the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs in 2016.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav congratulated the people of Indore for the top cleanliness ranking.
President Droupadi Murmu gave away the awards to the winners at a function held in New Delhi. At the function, Yadav received the award for the cleanest city. Madhya Pradesh urban administration minister Kailash Vijayvargiya and Indore civic chief Harshika Singh were present on the occasion.
The survey survey carried a total of 9,500 marks.
MP’s Indore city secured 4,709.40 marks out of 4,830 under ‘Service Level Progress’ for segregated collection, processing and disposal of different types of waste, Indore Municipal Corporation’s (IMC) consultant for the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, Amit Dubey, told PTI.
“A sustainable system of garbage collection, processing and disposal has been developed in Indore. The city’s consecutive success in the National Cleanliness Survey is based on this strong foundation,” he said.
With a complete ban on single-use plastic in Indore, waste generation has reduced here over a period of time, Dubey said.
The ‘3 R’ (reduce, reuse and recycle) centres, cloth bags and utensil ‘banks’, parks developed using reusable things out of waste materials and home composting units have also helped in the reduction of waste in the city, he said.
The waste from 4.65 lakh households and 70,543 commercial establishments is systematically sorted at the primary source and processed and disposed of at different plants in the city, IMC officials said.
Nearly 692 tonnes of wet waste, 683 tonnes of dry garbage and 179 tonnes of plastic trash are collected every day in the city under different categories, they pointed out.
For this, around 850 specially-designed vehicles are run across the city having different compartments for bio-waste items like diapers and sanitary napkins. The waste from households in the city is collected after segregation under six categories at the doorsteps.
A ‘Gobar-Dhan’ plant is being run by a company under public-private partnership (PPP) on 15 acres of land at Devguradiya trenching ground in the city.
It has the capacity to produce 17,000 to 18,000 kg of bio-CNG and 100 tonnes of organic fertilisers by processing 550 tonnes of wet waste (like fruits, vegetables and raw meat waste) every day, officials said.
The bio-CNG produced at this plant is used to run 110 city buses, with the fuel being sold to the municipal corporation for Rs 5 per kilogram less than the prevailing market rate, they said.
Hailing the feat, Chief Minister Yadav said the people of Indore have proved that cleanliness is not only their habit, but also an integral part of their thought process.
Yadav congratulated conservancy workers over the ranking and urged them to keep up the good work. Many sanitation workers were seen celebrating the achievement by beating drums and distributing sweets.
Dedicating the victory to Lord Ram, Indore Mayor Pushyamitra Bhargava said the city had become a model not only for India, but also the world with regard to cleanliness.
In order to maintain its position as India’s cleanest city, the civic body had coined the slogan ‘Indore will touch seventh sky of cleanliness’. A song based on this slogan was also played by conservancy trucks plying in the city to collect garbage. PTI HWP LAL GK BNM RSY
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