Comments
In order to make government’s flagship Swachh Bharat Mission successful, the Ministry of Urban Development has launched the second edition of the cleanliness survey ‘Swachh Survekshan-2017’.
While the first survey had ranked 73 cities with population of million and above each in January this year, the second round will cover 500 cities and towns, including those with a population of one lakh and above each besides capital towns with less than one lakh population and towns of importance from the point of view of heritage, tourism and hilly locations.
Swachh Survekshan Survey
“Since the first Swachh Survekshan Survey, 115 cities have become ‘Open Defecation Free’ and another 793 cities and towns are set to become so by March next year,” Union Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said.
Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala will become Open Defecation Free’ by March, 2017, he added.
The survey methodology and sources of data collection for evaluation would broadly remain the same — data collection from urban local bodies (ULBs) on mission progress and performance, citizen feedback using ICT channels and independent observations by the survey agency. Quality Council of India will conduct the survey.
“Cities will be ranked based on the reports by urban local bodies on the progress made towards construction of toilets, feedback of citizens and independent observation of sanitation levels,” the minister said.
The weightage for citizen feedback in this round of survey has been increased to 30 per cent from 25 per cent in the last survey and the weightage for the reporting by ULBs has been decreased to 45 per cent from 50 per cent last time. Weightage for independent observation has been retained at 25 per cent.
“Since the launch of Swachh Bharat Mission in October 2014, construction of 21 lakh household individual toilets has been completed and construction of another 21 lakh toilets is in progress,” Naidu said.
The mission target in this regard is construction of 1.04 crore toilets by 2019.
The minister also launched a web portal ‘Swachhata App’ and ‘Swachhta Helpline 1969’ to enable citizens associate more and more with mission in urban areas. Citizens can post photos of unhygienic places in urban areas on the app and they will be informed of action taken by respective ULBs in specific time period.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.