Flawed waste segregation to hit ‘Clean Surat’ ambition

Surat: The review meeting by Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) on Monday for the upcoming Swachhata Sarvekshan found that the city has done well in the sphere of door-to-door waste collection, night cleaning and building public pay and use toilets, but tripped over when it came to the issue of landfill site at Khajod and waste segregation.
Surat was declared fourth cleanest city in last year's Swachhata Sarvekshan and had devised a plan to attain top spot 12 months ago. However, the cleanliness campaign lost momentum midway because of various reasons and now things look different before the central team's visit to the city in February 2018. Significantly, SMC spends Rs100 crore every year to keep the city clean.
SMC has set up a 600 MT organic waste converter plant and 50 smaller organic waste converters at different vegetable and fruit markets to recycle waste. It has also started capping its landfill site at Khajod.
"Cradle dustbins are being installed at a distance of every 500-metre distance in commercial areas, biometric system of attendance is implemented at SMC offices and segregation of waste at source has been taken up in a big way. The fact that Surat was declared open defecation free city for second year shows that we are prepared for Swachhata Sarvekshan," municipal commissioner M Thennarasan said.
SMC's Swacchata App has been downloaded by more than 1 lakh users and is 11th among 20 top cities in this regard.
"We are processing the data and hope to complete the work for Swachhata Sarvekshan by February 1," an SMC officer said.
by via Surat News, Latest Surat News Headlines & Live Updates - Times of India