New Delhi: The Centre on Tuesday launched a mobile application through which people will be able to get their household waste picked up by urban municipal bodies. People will have to pay to civic bodies to avail the service through Swachh Nagar App. They can also track the waste-collection vehicle on the app, ensuring accountability of municipal corporations, according to the Union Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry.
Also Read: Solid Waste Management In Delhi, A Giant Problem: Experts
Launching Swachh Survekshan 2020 with the theme ‘Cleanliness is Our Right’, the minister Hardeep Singh Puri said the survey’s major focus has always been on citizen engagement, be it through feedback or indicators involving their participation.
Minister Puri said that the citizen-centric focus has been enhanced substantially this year. The minister said 24 states and more than 3,800 cities have been certified Open Defecation-Free (ODF) by now. The Union housing and urban affairs minister said,
More than 98 per cent of our toilet construction targets have been met. We are on track to achieve our sanitation targets.
The government has set a target of making the country ODF by October 2 this year. Talking about the Swachh Nagar app, the ministry’s Secretary Durga Shanker Mishra said people will be able to use the app to place a request to have solid waste, construction and demolition waste and wet waste picked up by the local civic body after making a payment.
A water plus protocol, which aims to provide a guideline for cities and towns to ensure no untreated waste water is released into the environment, enabling sustainability of the sanitation value chain, was also launched.
NDTV – Dettol Banega Swachh India campaign lends support to the Government of India’s Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM). Helmed by Campaign Ambassador Amitabh Bachchan, the campaign aims to spread awareness about hygiene and sanitation, the importance of building toilets and making India open defecation free (ODF) by October 2019, a target set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, when he launched Swachh Bharat Abhiyan in 2014. Over the years, the campaign has widened its scope to cover issues like air pollution, waste management, plastic ban, manual scavenging and menstrual hygiene. The campaign has also focused extensively on marine pollution, clean Ganga Project and rejuvenation of Yamuna, two of India’s major river bodies.
