Srinagar: – A day after Srinagar city was declared dirtier then Leh and Anantnag by a survey, the Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC) on Friday blamed stone pelters for getting 241st rank in the cleanliness list.
SMC, Commissioner Shafqat Khan, while taking to Kashmir Observer said, the survey was done at a time when everything was upside-down here in the Valley. It is because of stone pelters survey was not done properly, they didnt allow them to conduct it smoothly,
According to SMC Sanitation Officer, Syed Nisar, lack of Biomethanation plant became one of the main reasons for summer capital to suffer a steep fall in the cleanliness rankings
The Biomethanation plant will be able to process four to five tonnes of segregated organic municipal solid waste daily and produce biogas but unfortunately it is not presently available with us, he said.
Nisar, also blamed unrest for getting the low rank.
Due to protest and stone pelting our men were not able to do the work properly, plus SMC lack in latest technologies hope things would get better in future, he said
He said SMC will provide two dustbins to each household within municipal limits in coming month.
Srinagar was ranked at 152nd position in 2015, while this year the city has been pushed down and ranked at 241st position.
The Swachh Survekshan -2017 survey was carried out by the Quality Council of India (QCI), which had deployed 421 assessors for an on-the-spot assessment of 17,500 locations in 434 cities and towns in the country in January this year and its results were announced by Union minister M Venkaiah Naidu in New Delhi on Thursday.
Another 55 people regularly monitored the survey process in real time. To evaluate the cleanliness of the cities, the QCI has mainly concentrated on three major components.
The criteria and weightage for different components of sanitation-related aspects used for the survey were: 1) Solid waste management including door-to-door waste collection, processing and disposal, a) ODF (open defecation free) city status.
These carried 45 per cent of the total 2,000 marks. 2) Citizen feedback – 30 per cent & 3) Independent observation – 25 per cent. As part of it, the QCI also conducted a third party survey to re-access the efficacy of the cleanliness reports of all the Smart Cities.
As per the survey, top 10 clean cities in 2017: Indore -1, Bhopa-2, Visakhapatnam-3, Surat-4, Mysuru-5, Tiruchirapally-6, New Delhi Municipal Council-7, Navi Mumbai-8, Tirupati-9 and Vadodara-10.