Opinion : How Srinagar tops & gets a rank in top 50 Cleanest City
Thursday, May 20, 2021
How Srinagar tops & gets a rank in top 50s Cleanest City
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| Srinagar City |
Kashmirlook | May 2021
Every year ranking for cities and towns in cleaning is conducted by Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Govt. of India throughout the country under the banner of Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM). The survey is also known as Swachh Survekshan. The aim of the survey and giving ranks is to get an idea that how much clean our cities and towns are.
Undoubtedly, every nation wants to be clean and make efforts to tackle the hindrances which come in way of cleaning the nation. Be it air pollution, noise pollution, water pollution or the garbage in open sites, every state tries to mitigate the level of pollution in scientific way. After proper implementation of scientific ways of minimizing the pollution level the city tops and bags position.
Thankfully our city Srinagar has bagged the top position this time and is now among the top 50 cities of India as a cleanest city. The question is how it got this position this year which it had never got earlier and how it jumped from 357th rank in 2019 to 36th this year rank in Swachh Survekshan? Here I want to clear it and I hope you will find an adequate answer to this question.
Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC) has hired 8 IEC (Information, Education & Communication) partners for all 32 wards of the city in order to reach the people at grass root levels to inculcate their behavioral change in April 2018 under Solid Waste Management Rules Act 2016. These 32 wards are categorized in 8 different zones and each partner has been assigned one zone for work. These IEC partners are non-government, non-profit and non-political organizations (NGOs) which are working tirelessly in hand to hand with the SMC day and night to make our city neat, clean and green. As per the SMC officials, SMC does not have an adequate equipments and manpower to deal with the entire city.
It lacks 50% manpower and 50% infrastructure and to bridge this gap it decided to take help from these IEC partners. Thankfully the way these IEC partners are working is appreciable and the credit for getting the top rank goes to them too besides sanitation workers. IEC partners work in their respective zones in well planned way at different levels and taking all the major stakeholders from civil society into consideration. These civil society stakeholders include Mohalla committees, Masjid committees, community heads, school teachers, hospital staff, trade unions, market associations, youth groups, coaching institutions, ICDS centers, transport unions and street vendors.
Thus, all the groups of society viz. children, youth, elderly and women are addressed. All these stakeholders are being invited, collected and informed about the ways to be adopted for making our city clean like no road side littering, adaptation of source segregation, using different bins at household levels and at schools, colleges, coaching centers and at every place where waste is generated for segregating the waste at source.
It is very tough to collect the stakeholders in Srinagar due to their busy schedule. IEC partners are supposed to arrange a meeting separately for every level of stakeholders after calling and reminding them for at least 5 times in a week. It all is happening while the stakeholders are remaining busy with their jobs. Other activities are being carried out simultaneously with the women folk who are regarded as the major responsible for generating and controlling the waste and road side littering.
If we teach a woman the ways of contaminating the waste we are teaching a family. For that, IEC partners arrange meetings at ICDS centers where only women participate and get the knowledge of how to act as a responsible citizen. Stress is given in these meetings that people should understand the pros and cons of the segregation and avoidance of road side littering. Besides segregation, focus is now on pit composting so that minimal level of waste will be generated at household level. People are trained through different kind of training programs conducted by IEC partners for pit composting and thankfully people have started to practice it.
The other important stakeholder is the SMC officials at ward levels including Chief Sanitation Officer (CSO), Zonal Sanitation Officer (ZSO), Ward officer, Sanitary Inspector (SI), Beat Supervisor and the most vital is the sanitation workers (Safai Associates). IEC partners share weekly plans with these ward officials and works every moment in collaboration with them. Each activity is being documented which is later on submitted in a form of weekly reports to the Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) agency hired by SMC namely All India Institute of Local Self Governance (AIILSG) in both soft as well as hard copies. The activities are counter checked by ward officials. Each activity in a report should be supported with high resolution picture in GPS format where the time date and place with a Google map should be visible.
This kind of reporting is done by well versed with tech savvy highly qualified persons under the supervision of their mentors from their organizations. These all efforts by IEC partners lead Srinagar in top 50 cleanest cities. If SMC provides more and efficient support like financial resources on time we may see Srinagar in top 5 cleanest cities in future. It has been now a period of 18 months without monetary support from SMC to these IEC partners but still they are working as per their plans tirelessly.
Author is :
Field Coordinator
SMC-IEC-SWM partner
Human Welfare Voluntary Organization (HWVO) Srinagar
Author can be contacted here Email:- ahajavaid786@gmail.com