HP, Uttarakhand achieve 100% door-to-door solid waste collection

<p id="content">Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand have achieved 100 per cent door-to-door collection of solid waste, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) said today.</p>
The Ministry said that both states shared the details in a review meeting chaired by MoHUA Secretary Durga Shanker Mishra.

Senior officials of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand told the meeting that their states had achieved 100 per cent door-to-door collection of solid waste.

Source segregation of waste is practiced in 100 per cent of the wards in Himachal Pradesh and 65 per cent of the wards in Uttarakhand.

Himachal Pradesh officials said that it processed 369.46 tonnes Per Day (TPD) or 98 per cent of the waste in the state while Uttarakhand's figure was 901.45 TPD.

During interactions with officials of both the states, the MoHUA Secretary emphasized that the states should take proactive steps to prepare the cities for obtaining GFC (Garbage-Free City) certification and requested them to see that all their Urban Local Bodies improved their status to ODF+, ODF++ and also strive to achieve 3-Star GFC status for half the cities by 2022.

Himachal Pradesh officials said that the state had exceeded its target of 876 Community Toilet (CT) or Public Toilet (PT) seats by constructing 1,567 seats. Uttarakhand has constructed 20,750 (75 per cent) Individual Household Toilets (IHHLs) and 4,642 CT and PT seats as against a target of 2,611 seats.

The states were requested to achieve the IHHL targets expeditiously.

The MoHUA Secretary asked Uttarakhand officials to ensure that 100 per cent source segregation was achieved in the state soon as this would bring down the processing cost of waste.

Mishra said that the Ambikapur Model implemented by the government of Chhattisgarh is a classic example of source segregation resulting in value increase.

He advised the state government to depute a team of municipal functionaries, including ragpickers to Ambikapur.

Explaining the contours of changes in 'Swachh Sarvekshan 2021', the MoHUA Secretary said that the prize will now be called 'PrerakDauurSamman'. The qualifying criteria for the award will be based on segregation of waste, processing capacity for wet waste, recycling of waste, recycling of construction and demolition waste, percentage of waste going into landfills, and sanitation status of cities. The rankings will be 'Divya', 'Anupama', 'Ujjwal', 'Udit' and 'Arohia'.

The MoHUA Secretary suggested that the two states should at least aim for 'Ujjwal' (silver) ranking.

The states gave an account of the efforts made by them under the mission, including scientific waste processing and assured of all efforts to improve their performance..