Mission to develop liquid, solid waste mgmt systems in Ludhiana villages

Nitin Jain

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, November 18

To achieve the national ranking on the basis of quantitative and qualitative sanitation parameters in villages, the nationwide Swachh Survekshan Grameen (SSG)-2021 has got underway in Ludhiana district.

Aimed at making all 968 villages under 13 blocks of the district neat and clean, the rural cleanliness mission will develop liquid and solid waste management systems with the provision of compost pits and model ponds in each village.

Bringing an end to open defecation, all 13 blocks in the district have at least one open defecation free (ODF) village each, which were maximum in any district in the state.

With this, the population of 31,380 residing in 13 villages of the district have shunned the age-old open defecation following the provision of toilets in each household.

Deputy Commissioner Varinder Kumar Sharma, who launched the SSG-2021 in the district, told The Tribune that special grants amounting to Rs 37.53 lakh had already been given to the best performing villages while a sum of Rs 1.65 crore was being spent on developing the liquid and solid waste management system through compost pits and model ponds with Thapar technology in 13 ODF villages. He said a cleanliness survey would be carried out in the district by an independent agency for which 29 villages will be randomly selected. Under the survey, 10 households and five public places from each selected village will be evaluated on various cleanliness parameters.

“The main objective of the SSG-2021 was to encourage large-scale citizen participation performance comparison of districts and states, ascertain progress of cleanliness on ground, solicit feedback from citizens and evaluate implementation of solid and liquid waste management in districts,” Sharma said.

Divulging details of the survey, Additional Deputy Commissioner (Development) Amit Kumar Panchal said of the total 17 lakh rural population in the district, 87,000 villagers had already registered their feedback under the SSG-21 while a mass awareness campaign had been launched to involve each and every villager in the mission and solicit their feedback.

He said the survey would be conducted from October 25 to December 23 and the areas of marking include self-reporting, direct observation and citizen feedback.

Emphasising that the citizen feedback was one of the key components of the SSG-2021, he advised district officers to prepare a meticulous plan for the success of SSG-2021 in the district.

Officialspeak

District administration, departments concerned and village panchayats need to put in their best efforts for conducting the SSG-2021 on ground. Since citizen feedback is the most important component of the survey, we will undertake extensive awareness drives to make it a people’s movement. It will foster a spirit of healthy competition among districts to top in national ranking, which will be a matter of pride for the entire state. — VARINDER KUMAR SHARMA, DEPUTY COMMISSIONER

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