Do your bit: BMC wants your ideas on how to keep Mumbai clean

The civic body has announced an email id – cleanmumbai.suggestion@gmail.com- on which citizens can send their inputs. They will then be reviewed and if found feasible, will feature in the BMC’s five-year cleanliness plan.

Do you feel strongly about cleanliness and have ideas about making Mumbai cleaner? The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) wants to hear you. In a first, the civic body has decided to take citizens on board while it drafts its ambitious plan to make the city litter-free by 2019.

The civic body has announced an email id – cleanmumbai.suggestion@gmail.com- on which citizens can send their inputs. They will then be reviewed and if found feasible, will feature in the BMC’s five-year cleanliness plan.

“The idea behind such a participatory exercise was to provide a channel for citizens to provide their ideas. Since they are the biggest stakeholders in the final outcome of our cleanliness campaign, they need to be involved while we formulate plans,” said Prakash Patil, deputy municipal commissioner (Solid waste management).

However, the civic body’s campaigns have received a rather tepid response from citizens so far. Its ‘Shramdaan’ activities, where civic employees sweep streets every Friday across all 227 wards, and its weekly Saturday mass campaigns, aimed at increasing public involvement in cleanliness drives, have not generated much of a buzz among people.

However, Patil is hopeful this planning exercise will get citizens involved. “We are open to all kinds of suggestions – from how to manage our dumping grounds to whether we need more people for trash collection. Citizens must feel free to write in constructive suggestions.”

The litter-free city plan will revolve around both macro and micro-level aspects of waste management. Civic officials said the plan will include finer details such as ways to make house-to-house garbage collection more efficient as well as developing more scientific ways to process the city’s waste at the dumping grounds.