The Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC) is organizing a cleanliness competition among the 31 Wards, 58 NGOs involved in the door-to-door garbage collection with junior technical officers (JTOs) monitoring the cleanliness of the wards and the sanitary supervisors involved in the cleanliness process in every ward.
Geography Information System (GIS) specialist of GMC, Utpal Sarmah Boruah said, “The competition will be judged by a panel comprising eminent personalities of the city on the parameters of regular garbage collection, disposal system/segregation, innovation carried out for the cleanliness of wards and the percentage of public participation in every ward.”
Boruah explained that there will be some indicators under three criteria on which a survey will be conducted to find out the best wards, JTOs, NGOs and sanitary supervisors.
The first criterion is the diligence of the primary collection of waste in the wards which will depend on the percentage of household level coverage of sewerage waste management services through door-to-door garbage collection, frequency of door-to-door collection of waste, time of collection of waste from doorstep, efficiency in collecting waste at a fixed time, frequency of street cleaning and time of collection of waste from the streets.
The second criterion is the behaviour of citizens of the wards and their concerns regarding storage, segregation and disposal of waste which will be studied by knowing methods of disposal of waste by the households and establishments, extent of segregation of waste, percentage of segregated waste at source being collected in a segregated manner by the NGOs, satisfaction level of the people with respect to collection of waste from the street in their locality and satisfaction level of the people with respect to street sweeping in their locality.
The third indicator is people’s awareness and participation which will be identified by knowing the percentage of households and establishments participating in any form of awareness program, percentage of different awareness programs in which households and establishments have participated and the level of awareness and interest in participation by households and establishments in improving the solid waste management.
There are five members in the panel which will select the best NGO and the ward – GMC Mayor (chairman of the panel), GMC commissioner (member), GMC associate planner (member), GMC conservancy executive engineer (member) and academician Dr Pradip Baishya (guest member).
The survey for the competition has started from May 1 and will continue till July end. The results will be declared on 15th August 2018.
The winning ward, JTO, NGO and sanitary supervisor will be rewarded and felicitated.
The ward with 100% households getting fully covered daily by the NGOs will get 20 marks, 80% to 99% of the households getting covered daily in a ward will get 10 marks, 50-79% of the households of a ward getting covered daily by the NGOs will get 5 marks and below 50% households getting covered daily will get 0 marks.
Special GMC squad to check littering, urinating, spitting in public places
The Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC), in a positive step, is planning to form a special unit - Swachh Guwahati Squad - which will act to stop littering, urinating and spitting in public places. This squad will also be checking on those who throw garbage at public places.
“All 58 NGOs who are already working with us will provide 2 persons each for this drive. These 116 personnel will be trained on how to tackle the situation in all the respective wards,” GMC Commissioner Monalisa Goswami told G Plus.
The offenders will be penalised if found guilty. The amount of penalty has not been decided yet. It will be shared between the persons collecting the fine and the GMC.
The Commissioner revealed that the squad will start working from the first week of June 2018. The initiative has been taken after studying many cities of India and the cleanliness strategies adopted by the clean cities in the country, a source revealed.