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Swachh Survekshan League 2020: Ghaziabad ranking slips without a landfill
The cleanliness ranking of Ghaziabad city has slipped since last year’s Swachh Survekshan competition. This is the first time since 2017 that city’s ranking has
The cleanliness ranking of Ghaziabad city has slipped since last year’s Swachh Survekshan competition. This is the first time since 2017 that city’s ranking has dropped. In 2017, Ghaziabad stood 351 and jumped to 36th position in 2018. In March 2019, Ghaziabad was 13th of 425 urban local bodies assessed for level of sanitation.
As per the results of the Swachh Survekshan (SS) League 2020, announced by the Union ministry of housing and urban affairs (MoHUA) on Tuesday, city’s pan-India ranking stood at 32 in Quarter 1 and 30 in Quarter 2. The results were announced for cities with population of up to and more than 10 lakh. The Ghaziabad municipal corporation (GMC) figures in the latter category.
Responding to the ranking, GMC officials said, “Points were lost because our landfill site at Pratap Vihar was shut in February, 2019. So, we faced the uphill task of disposing our daily solid waste. At present, we have secured four different sites where garbage is being segregated and disposed properly. We’re taking the league results as a wake call and we need to intensify efforts,” Arun Kumar Mishra, accounts officer and nodal officer for the Swachhta competition, said.
“The league-stage results are based on management information system (MIS) reports uploaded by us. The actual physical verification and ground-level observation by Swacchta teams will begin in January. So, we need to gear up for the last quarter. We are focussing on cleanliness and complete disposal of our daily solid waste of about 850 metric tonnes. We are also aiming to achieve ‘water+’ and ‘open defecation-free ++’ protocols,” Mishra said.
“The performance of cities in SS League 2020 is crucial for their overall ranking in Swachh Survekshan 2020. The quarterly assessments will be included in the annual survey scheduled for January 4-31. The rank accounts for 25% weightage,” a Ministry statement read.
In 2019, Ghaziabad had also emerged as the cleanest city in the state of Uttar Pradesh. However, city’s Quarter 1 and 2 ranking stood at 6 and 7, respectively, for the state.
Last year, Ghaziabad administration officials had said they aim to improve city’s ranking and become one of the 10 cleanest cities in the country.
DISTRICT’S OTHER TOWNS
Apart from Ghaziabad, the league rankings of towns having population below 10 lakhs featured Loni Nagar Palika, Khoda-Makanpur Nagar Palika and Modinagar Nagar Palika.
The three nagar palikas of Loni, Khoda and Modinagar secured 4, 192 and 102 ranks, respectively, in quarter 2, which was significantly better that their quarter 1 ranks of 106, 211 and 224, respectively.
Swachh Survekshan League 2020 (SS League 2020) was introduced with the objective of sustaining the on-ground performance of cities along with continuous monitoring of service-level performance when it comes to cleanliness.
The earlier annual competition is now being conducted in three quarters—April to June, July to September and October to December. There are 2,000 marks assigned for each quarter. The marks are assigned on the basis of monthly updation of MIS by cities along with citizen’s validation on the 12 service level progress indicators through outbound calls.
