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2023 Swachh Survekshan: Mohali bounces back strongly; leaps 31 spots to secure 82nd position
In more accolades, Mohali secured the top spot in Punjab among 16 cities with over 1 lakh population; wven on the certifications front, it secured a one-star rating in the Garbage Free Cities (GFC) certification, compared to a zero score last year
Having dropped to the 113th rank last year, Mohali made a strong comeback by climbing 31 spots to secure the 82nd position among 446 cities with a population over 1 lakh in the 2023 Swachh Survekshan rankings.
In more accolades, Mohali secured the top spot in Punjab among 16 cities with over 1 lakh population.
Even on the certifications front, it secured a one-star rating in the Garbage Free Cities (GFC) certification, compared to a zero score last year.
Overall, Mohali scored a total of 6203 out of 9500 points (65.2%), improving from 4036 out of 7500 (53.8%) in 2022.
It scored the highest in citizen voice category, bagging 1676 marks out of 2170, followed by 3277 out of 4830 in service legal progress and 1250 out of 2500 in certification category.
The city scored a perfect 100% in cleanliness of water bodies and public toilets, and also 98% in cleanliness of residential and market areas. The city was also appreciated for its door-to-door collection of waste for which it got 97% marks.
However, 35% in source segregation, reflecting poor segregation of dry and wet waste by residents, kept it from achieving a better rank.
Mohali scored 77% in waste generation vs processing, which means the city has yet to achieve complete processing of garbage collected across the city, though more than half of the waste is being processed on a daily basis.
An 85% score in remediation of dumpsites also impacted its ranking.
Notably, Mohali has yet to allot the contract for bioremediation of the 2.79 lakh cubic metres waste lying dumped in Phase 8-B, Industrial Area.
Bioremediation of city’s daily garbage, apart from the legacy waste collected at the 10-acre landfill for the past 15 years, was stalled in January last year after expiry of the previous contract.
Mohali generates 100 metric tonnes (MT) of waste daily, including 40 MT wet and 60 MT mixed waste. In absence of bioremediation for nearly a year, the daily waste is getting dumped at the landfill without processing.
If the contract is approved by the Punjab local government department, legacy garbage processing is likely to resume in the next few months, as per MC officials.
Mayor Amarjeet Singh Sidhu, senior deputy mayor Amrik Singh Somal, municipal commissioner Navjot Kaur and joint commissioner Kiran Sharma acknowledged the contributions of sanitation workers in making this accomplishment possible.
The senior deputy mayor, along with the commissioner, joint commissioner and assistant commissioner Manpreet Singh, received the “state-level” category award from Manoj Joshi, secretary, Union ministry of housing and urban affairs at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi on Thursday.
“This achievement reflects the perseverance of the MC, and the constant support of the citizens and stakeholders. It is a testament to our commitment to transforming Mohali into a clean and sustainable city. We worked hard to improve the cleanliness parameters. Last year we failed to bag any star rating under GFC, but this year we managed to get a one-star rating. We will surely work harder to achieve better ratings as we will also soon get mechanical sweeping machines for the main roads,” said municipal commissioner Navjot Kaur.
In the 2022 cleanliness survey, Mohali had slipped 32 notches from the previous year’s 81st rank to 113th spot among 382 cities in the one to 10 lakh category.
Even at the state level, Mohali had dropped from the second to the third position last year.
