Big push for pending Chandigarh Municipal Corporation works

Sandeep Rana

Chandigarh, January 11

In a major push to the city’s pending development works, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has allocated over Rs 43 crore under the toilet construction and SWM (solid waste management) components to the Municipal Corporation (MC).

It has allocated Rs3.3 crore for toilet construction, Rs28.5 crore for solid waste management, Rs8.9 crore for information, education and communication (IEC) activities, and Rs4.5 crore for capacity building. The funds have been allocated for a period of five years.

The MC is preparing proposals for these works to be sent to the ministry. Proposals for the solid waste management have been sent to the ministry.

“The funds have been allocated and we are preparing proposals to be sent to the ministry,” confirmed MC Commissioner Anindita Mitra.

It will come as a big relief to the MC which has various works pending such as renovation of toilets and removing the mountain of waste from the dumping ground.

Earlier, the corporation had put on hold its project of renovating public toilets for want of funds. Besides, Rs33 crore bio-mining project at half of the dumping ground is underway. To clear the remaining half of the ground, more funds are required. With provision of funds under solid waste management, money will not be a problem with the MC now for removing the waste mountain.

“For toilet construction and SWM components, the allocation of funds has been done on the basis of weighted average of urban population of states/UTs to total urban population of statutory towns, and area of state to total area of country,” read the ministry order.