With less than 20 days in hand for the coveted ‘Swacchta Survekshan – 2019’ competition to begin, the State’s biggest Urban Local Body (ULB) – Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC) seems to be lagging far behind when it comes to the sanitation challenge preparations.
Irrespective of the attempts to streamline all major civic services here, the Municipal Corporation has failed utterly in managing the affairs. The vital component of the competition which includes door to door garbage collection, disposal of generated garbage, creation of dumping pits, constitution of Mini-Transfer Stations (MTS), drafting long term plan for discarding garbage including collection and transportation status are left in total muddle since quite some time now.
Besides the major health and sanitation issues creating pain, even the establishment of waste to energy plant at Jhiri is hanging in balance. Moreover, not a single effort has been put in past one year to introduce any innovative system that elevates the sanitation concept in a broader way among the citizens. MSW – Essel Infra, the company handling the charge of solid waste management service in Ranchi had taken the responsibility of door to door garbage collection on October 2, 2016.
In 26 months, the lopsided approach of the firm and reckless attitude of RMC has resulted in a series of protest led by the labourers for delay in their monthly imbursement including closure of MTS for more than a month at a few localities. At present, the company is managing the door to door garbage collection work at 33 wards while the other 20 wards are under the supervision of RMC.
As per the agreement, the MSW – Essel Infra was supposed to take the charge of each ward by August 2018. Every month, the company is paid a hefty sum of Rs. 80 lakh by RMC for its operation. Regardless of this, the civic guardians are yet to prepare a blueprint for streamlining the services ahead of the sanitation challenge – 2019 where more than 4000 and above cities from across the country are expected to compete this year.
“Major fault is from the respective company’s side. Brainstorming is going on as how to go about it. 20 additional vehicles have been purchased. With little planning and apt deputation of human resources, things will fall into place. Also, there is a plan to terminate the company soon. Since, the hand-over process is quite tedious, it will take some time. At the moment, with the existing resources, RMC will be able to cover 75 per cent of the total area here alone,” said RMC Officer (Health), Dr. Kiran Kumari, safeguarding the face of the civic body.
Meanwhile, in yet another major attempt to scale up the coverage of the annual ranking exercise by promoting and elaborating the concept of ‘Swacch Bharat Abhiyan’s – Swacchta Survekshan’, special attention under ‘Solid Waste Management’ criteria is on processing and disposal of waste (30 per cent), collection and transportation (27 per cent), sustainable sanitation (25 per cent), Innovation (5 per cent), Bye-laws (5 per cent), CB (3 per cent) and Information, Education and Communication (IEC) ( 5 per cent).
Comprising 5000 marks, an additional element containing 1,250 marks – (certification 25 per cent, 20 per cent star rating including 5 per cent for open defecation free (ODF), ODF + and ODF ++ has been added, besides the model of direct observation, citizen feedback, service level progress for which 1,250 marks each under these three sub-heads is given to the city.
