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2023 Swachh Survekshan: Panchkula plummets 53 spots to rank 139th
Even in Haryana, Panchkula had to settle for the third place, losing to Rohtak and Kalka that attained the first and second ranks, respectively
Absence of a garbage processing facility proved costly for Panchkula, as it tumbled down from the 86th rank in 2022 to the 139th position among 446 cities with a population above 1 lakh in the 2023 Swachh Survekshan rankings released on Thursday.
Even in Haryana, it had to settle for the third place, losing to Rohtak and Kalka that attained the first and second ranks, respectively. In 2022, Panchkula had improved it rank to 86 from 99 in 2021, when it had dropped from the 56th position received in 2020. In 2019, it had ranked 71, improving from 142 in 2018 and 211 in 2017.
Scoring 5224.30 out of 9500 (54.9%), the city’s performance dropped from last year’s 57%, when it had got 4273 out of 7500 marks. The city received 2820.44 in service level progress, 1678.90 in citizen voice score and 725 in certification score.
Mayor Kulbhushan Goyal attributed the slip in ranking to change in categories: “We have taken steps and shown improvement in terms of most scores.”
Poor legacy waste processing became its undoing
Despite scoring 99% in door-to-door collection of garbage and 98% in waste generation vs processing, Panchkula got a zero in remediation of dumpsites and 61% in source segregation, majorly impacting its ranking.
Panchkula generates 200 tonnes of waste on a daily basis from around 70,000 households, of which 60% is dry while the rest is wet. With residents of nine sectors in the trans-ghaggar area, Moginand, Bana and Madanpur villages seeking removal of waste from Jhuriwala dumping ground, MC came up with a stop-gap arrangement to transport garbage all the way to Ambala’s Patvi for processing.
But it failed to eliminate 2.5 lakh tonnes of legacy waste from Sector 23, where garbage was dumped until July 2021, and Jhuriwala, adversely affecting the city’s score.
Its project to biomine legacy waste in Sector 23 is expected to complete by March 2024. The initiative aims to dispose of 3 lakh metric tonnes (MT) of waste at a rate of 60,000 MT each month. A biomining machine has also been installed at Jhuriwala to dispose of approximately 90,000 MT of waste, which is expected to conclude by December.
On the bright side, the city managed to score a perfect 100% in cleanliness of water bodies and public toilets. It also scored 99% for cleanliness of residential areas and markets, which is seen as an improvement from the last ranking, where Panchkula had lost points on cleanliness of market areas, residential areas, drains, water bodies and public toilets.
