One-day workshop on Swachh Survekshan 2019 held

IMPHAL | Sept 11 : A one-day workshop on Swachh Survekshan 2019, India’s cleanliness survey was held today at City Convention, Palace Gate, Imphal with an objective to spread awareness regarding the survey to the concerned stakeholders and department of Municipal Administration.

The workshop was organised by department of Municipal Administration, Housing and Urban development (MAHUD).

Addressing his speech as chief guest of the function, minister of MAHUD, Th. Shyamkumar lauded all the stakeholders and announced that his department will give financial assistance of Rs.2 lakh each to all the urban local bodies for the upcoming cleanliness survey.

He stated that despite having many grievances in performing the tasks of cleanliness mission, all the 27 urban local bodies of state had achieved the certificate of Open Defecation Free (ODF) one year before the set deadline of 2019.

“This shows that state is actively participating in cleanliness mission taken up by present government since 2014,” he added.

Stating that the achievement has inspired him to go further with practical steps of making the state cleaner, Shyamkumar assured of addressing all the inconveniences faced by urban local bodies, nagar panchayats and municipal co-operations by increasing the manpower, followed by systematic functioning of grass root level representatives and Cabinet meeting.

As a part of the programme, ODF certificates were distributed to all the representatives of 27 urban local bodies. Manipur is now among the 18 states in the country to become an ODF certified state.

The objective of the survey is to encourage large scale citizen participation, to ensure sustainability of initiatives taken towards garbage free and open defecation free cities, to provide credible outcomes which would be validated by third party certification, to institutionalise existing systems through online processes and to create awareness amongst all sections of the society about the importance of working together towards making towns and cities a better place to live in.

The survey will be conducted under Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban (SBM-U) for a total of 5,000 marks, compared to 4,000 marks in the previous survey.

Ministry of housing and urban affairs (MoHUA) has revised the weightage in into four categories such as service level progress (SLP), direct observation, citizen feedback and certification. Certification category is a new addition, where emphasis will be given to ODF status of the cities by a third party deputed by MoHUA to ensure on sustainability of the sanitation.

As a part of the programme resource persons made a presentation on various topics related to Swachh Survekshan Mission.

Many officials of concerned department attended the function and the workshop was participated by around 500 people.