Swachh Survekshan 2023: City’s ranking improves marginally

Charanjit Singh Teja

Amritsar, January 12

The holy city is ranked at 142nd place out of 446 cities in the nation-wide cleanliness survey. The city got 5181.80 marks out of 9500 marks, which included 4,830 for service level progress, 2,500 for certifications and 2,170 for citizens’ voice. The results of Swachh Survekshan 2023 were declared by the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) on Thursday evening.

The 446 cities in the country having a population of 100,000 or more had competed for various components including door-to-door collection of garbage, waste segregation, processing of solid waste and environment.

Among the 16 cities of Punjab, Amritsar was ranked 6th. As per the survey results, SAS Nagar, Abohar, Bathinda, Patiala and Ferozepur are better than Amritsar. In the year 2022, a cleanliness survey was conducted for 45 cities with a population of more than 10 lakh in the country. In this, Amritsar got the 32nd position and got 4069.76 out of 7050 marks. In this way, the average ranking of Amritsar has improved a bit this time.

The city got 5181 points out of 9000 for various components. The MC lacks dry and wet waste segregation at source level. As most of the households do not keep the dry and wet waste separately. Even the garbage lifting vehicles sans any arrangement segregated dry and wet waste. The processing of the garbage dump is also one of the major reasons for poor ranking in the survey.

The city’s ranking was affected due to irregular door-to-door collection and segregation of garbage. The negative feedbacks of residents about the door-to-door collection hit the ranking. Among the 85 wards of the city, there are many areas in which garbage collection vehicles visit twice a week. The irregular lifting of garbage led to negative feedback.

MC health wing officials claimed that as compared to previous years, the ranking has improved. Efforts will be made to further improve the ranking.

Municipal Corporation Joint Commissioner Hardeep Singh said the ranking of Swachh Survekshan would further improve. He said the cooperation of city residents is necessary to improve the raking in the survey. The city dwellers should not throw garbage on streets.