Garbage on ground contradicts Pune’s cleanliness ranking: NSCC, residents

According to the NSCC - an independent group of citizen volunteers which has been part of the apex committee formed by the Pune Municipal Corporation’s solid waste management department – the ranking means nothing if the city still has a sizeable garbage problem

While Pune city has seen a major jump from the past two years in being ranked fifth in the ‘Swachh Sarvekshan 2021’, residents and mohalla committee members are of the view that a lot remains to be done and that the ranking may lead to complacency moving forward. Statistically speaking, this year’s survey result is encouraging for Pune city as in 2020 and 2019, it was ranked 17th and 37th respectively. Whereas, the neighbouring Pimpri-Chinchwad has been ranked 19th in the ‘Swachh Sarvekshan 2021’, which is an improvement of five spots compared to 2020.

While Pune city has seen a major jump from the past two years in being ranked fifth in the ‘Swachh Sarvekshan 2021’, residents and mohalla committee members are of the view that a lot remains to be done and that the ranking may lead to complacency moving forward. (Ravindra Joshi/HT PHOTO)

According to the National Society of Clean Cities (NSCC) - an independent group of citizen volunteers which has been part of the apex committee formed by the Pune Municipal Corporation’s (PMC’s) solid waste management (SWM) department – the ranking means nothing if the city still has a sizeable garbage problem.

Pune city used to generate 2,100 tonne of garbage daily but with the recent inclusion of 23 villages, it generates 2,400 tonne of garbage daily. Although the civic body claims to lift garbage from all localities, there are areas such as Baner, Balewadi, Sutarwadi, Hadapsar, Kondhwa, Mohammadwadi, Kalyani nagar and Katraj where waste is regularly seeing lying unattended, several complaints from citizens notwithstanding.

Shyamala Desai, president, NSCC, said, “The citizens are not involved in the stages where officers actually come for a visit and even don’t know the content of the report submitted to Swachh Sarvekshan. We are in the loop to the extent that we are involved from time to time to keep the SWM department in check and to raise queries as to what is to be done to make the city cleaner, but I cannot say that we are aware of how the parameters are used to measure the cleanliness at the prabhag levels.”

G Bhaskar, member, NSCC, said, “I feel a lot remains to be done. The main concern about this rank is that it will create complacency and things will deteriorate hereon. Garbage project operations are not efficient. Dry waste is a far cry from what is expected, garbage collection is shoddy, bulk generators source segregation is mired in politics. Accountability and responsibility of SWM department officials is practically absent. There are no ward-level discussions on these matters, for there is no compulsion to conduct meetings on a regular basis. We have many times hinted to the SWM department to conduct studies for causes such as littering of roads and open plots, but there is no effort to study and resolve the problem.”

Ravindra Sinha, a citizen, said, “What metrics are used for such ranking is highly questionable? The amount of garbage dumped and burned on roads and in streams and rivers is visible only to us citizens and not to these ranking agencies.”

Vaishali Patkar, a resident of Aundh, said, “We do not raise the right topics that are actionable and strategic and we spend too much time on appreciation and status reporting.”

According to the ministry of housing and urban affairs which is the nodal agency for the Swachh Bharat Mission aka the central government’s annual cleanliness survey to promote sanitation in urban centres, the score of the five cities within the top five rankings is: Indore (5618.14); Surat (5559.21); Vijayawada (5,368.37); Navi Mumbai (5,307.68); and Pune (4,900.94).