Highlights
- 43,200 out 81,015 wards have achieved 100% door-to-door waste collection
- Generating civic sense among people is very important: Mr Naidu
- All cities of Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh are open defecation free
Emphasising on the need to tackle the growing crisis of solid waste management in India, Union Minister for Urban Development And Housing M Venkaiah Naidu on June 7 said that gradually the government and citizens are now treating ‘waste’ as ‘wealth’ by incorporating techniques of ‘reuse, reduce and recycle’ in their daily lives. The Union Minister was speaking at the 9th Foundation Day of Foundation for Restoration of National Values (FRNV) in the capital, where he also launched a souvenir on waste management.
The government is encouraging solid waste management by giving out subsidies to state governments for setting up waste-to-energy and waste-to-compost plants, he said. Municipal bodies across the country are striving hard to achieve 100 per cent door-to-door waste collection, “So far 43,200 wards out of 81,015 urban wards have achieved this feat,” said Mr Naidu.
We are already on our way to turn this waste to wealth. #MyCleanIndia #SwachhBharat pic.twitter.com/MfxHjo7QQz
— Swachh Bharat Urban (@SwachhBharatGov) June 7, 2017
As the theme for FRNV was Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, the minister went on to link attitudinal change with regard to cleanliness and sanitation, “The mission of clean India is in progress and the need of the hour is to restore our national values, change our mentality towards sanitation,” Mr Naidu said. He further added, “Lack of cleanliness and unhygienic condition are a reflection of our rapidly declining values and culture. We have to consider it seriously.”
Biggest ever mass mobilization undertaken in our country is #SwachhBharat. Most heartening to see women in the forefront of this movement pic.twitter.com/TgxzAZ1tU3
— M Venkaiah Naidu (@MVenkaiahNaidu) June 7, 2017
Mobalising citizens and generating civic sense among people is very important if India has to achieve 100 per cent sanitation by 2019, Mr Naidu said. He specially appealed to the Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) to come forward and join the sanitary workers in bringing about awareness in their respective areas.
He also lauded the efforts taken towards the open defecation free (ODF) target by the citizens who are bringing a behavourial change in their respective regions. People like the 104-year old Kunwar Bai who sold goats to build a toilet, 20-year old married women who returned to her maternal parent’s house for lack of toilet and rural children who went on a fast to end open defecation found a special mention in his speech.
So far, the government has constructed four crore individual toilets and around 1, 28,976 community or public toilets and states like Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat have already declared all their cities open defecation free the minister said.
In area of cleanliness, he lauded the efforts of Afroz Shah who removed 5.3 million kilos of waste from the filthy Versova beach in Mumbai and said “it is people like him who are setting right examples and making the Clean India mission more and more popular.”
He concluded by saying, Mahatma Gandhi’s dream of a Swachh Bharat is progressing but it has a long way to go and for this multiple stakeholders from NGOs, celebrities to prominent personalities should help the government in spreading awareness on sanitation and cleanliness.
