Awareness up, 90% waste segregation target achieved in Punjab

Rajmeet Singh

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, April 13

Heightened awareness about sanitation amid the fear of Covid-19 pandemic has helped the Local Government Department achieve a daunting task of convincing the residents to segregate dry and wet garbage.

Since lockdown, the door-to-door collection of segregated dry and wet garbage has jumped from 67 per cent to 90 per cent. From densely populated to the posh areas in urban local bodies, mainly in Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Amritsar and other large cities, more and more people are cooperating with the sanitation workers. At some places, residents are even honouring the frontline soldiers in the battle against coronavirus.

Nearly 4,100 metric tonnes of garbage is being collected from more than 21 lakh households in the state daily.

Brahm Mohindra, Local Government Minister, said, “Earlier, convincing people to segregate the waste was a daunting task. Now, aggressive campaign on social media and otherwise regarding the significance of hygiene in view of the pandemic has resulted in visible change in the way people handle their waste and in their attitude towards sanitation workers.”

To push the campaign, a grant of nearly Rs 350 crore is expected to be released to the ULBs by next week.

The sanitation workers, mostly contractual, have been entrusted with the critical job of collecting the garage from households of over 8,000 quarantined persons and treating it as biomedical waste for disposal.

Sanjay Kumar, Additional Chief Secretary, Local Government, told the Tribune that a 31,000-strong work force of sanitation workers is at the frontline in the battle against the pandemic. “They are also involved in other activities such as ensuring door-to-door delivery of food and essential services and enforcing social distances,” he said.

“Initially, we undertook an extensive door-to-door campaign to spread awareness on Covid. We have achieved 100 per cent door-to-door collection. The responsibility of cleaning public places is also on their shoulders”, he pointed out.

Apart from announcing an insurance cover of Rs 50 lakh for the sanitation workers, the retirement age has been increased for the workers who were to retire on March 31. The department has started night sweeping in 17 ULBs.