Central Government today launched ‘Swachh Survekshan-2018’ to rank all the 4,041 cities and towns of the country based on infrastructure development for improved sanitation services and their sustainability, outcomes, citizen connect and visible impact on ground.

            Minister of Housing & Urban Affairs Shri Narendra Singh Tomar launched the survey, the third in the series and released a comprehensive Survey Tool Kit, explaining the methodology, weightages and new features and thrust areas  that helps cities and towns prepare for the field survey over the next six months.

            Shri Tomar said that this first Pan-India sanitation survey will assess sanitation levels in all the cities and towns of the country impacting the lives of about 40 crore urban people and is the largest of its kind in the world. He said the results of two previous such surveys announced  in 2016 and 2017 have generated substantial excitement and enthusiasm among the cities and citizens besides promoting a healthy competition among all the stakeholders, leading to expanding the scope of the survey to all urban areas of the country. The Minister informed that the methodology and weightages for Swachh Surekshan-2018 have been modified to certain extent based on extensive consultations with city and state governments, experts and other stakeholders and in line with the progress of Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban).

            The Survey Methodology seeks to capture the efforts under and  outcomes of Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban) as the cities move on from building toilets towards Solid Waste Management with emphasis on decentralized solutions, ensuring sustainability of improved sanitation infrastructure and services and enforcement.

            Explaining the details of methodology and its new features, Shri Durga Shanker Mishra, Secretary(Housing & Urban Affairs) stated that keeping in view the need for citizen involvement in assessing progress in sanitation and  outcomes to be felt on ground, total weightage for Citizen feedback and Independent observation of sanitation have been increased by 10% over that of 2017 Survey. To encourage cities take up innovative sanitation practices and solutions, a new element of ‘Innovation’ has been introduced this year with a weightage of 5%.

            Stressing on the need for ensuring sustainability of improved sanitation levels and maintenance of the sanitation infrastructure being created, Shri Mishra said, the latest survey will assess availability of water connections to toilets, recovery of Operation & Maintenance costs of Community and Public toilets and SWM infrastructure through user charges, advertisement revenue, municipal taxes etc, liquid waste management though treatment and septage disposal, segregation of municipal waste at source, decentralized compost making by bulk generators etc. weightage for processing of solid waste has been increased by 5%.  

            Focusing on enforcement, this survey will also quantify and reward the outcomes of Notifications issued by state and city governments regarding collection of user charges, sale and marketing of compost, linking of bio-metric attendance to payroll of sanitation staff, incentivizing performance further to GPS tracking of garbage collection vehicles, maintenance of public toilets through third party etc.

            Ensuring rigorous scrutiny of claims of cities about physical progress in improvement in sanitation infrastructure and service levels, huge  negative marking in respect of all parameters in this regard has been introduced this time. Under this, if claims of city governments are found to be incorrect by independent assessors, they will get 33% negative marks besides zero marks in respect of such parameters.

            The 4,041 cities and towns to be covered under Swachh Survekshan-2018, results of which will  be announced in March next year, include 500 with a population of one lakh and above each and state capitals and 3,541 with population below one lakh each. For these 3,541 towns, State and Zonal rankings will be announced besides national rankings for the other 500 cities and towns.

            Under this survey, cities will be ranked based on 71 sanitation related parameters with different  weightages for  a total of 4,000 marks. Total score has been doubled this time to avoid crowding of cities with very marginal differences in scores that happened in the previous survey.

Sanitation component-wise weightages:     

Component	Weightage in 2017 Survey	Weightage in 2018 Survey
ODF progress	30 %	30 %
Collection & Transportation of Solid Waste	40%	30%
Processing & disposal of solid waste	20%	25%
Information, Eduation, Communication	5%	5%
Capacity Building	5%	5%
Innovation	-	5%
Total marks	2,000	4,000

 

 

Assessment Weightages:

Assessment category	Weightage in 2017 Survey	Weightage in 2018 Survey
Service level progress (Infrastructure creation, processes, operations)	45%	35%
Citizen feedback	30%	35%
Independent field observation	25%	30%

 

            Marks for each of the components of sanitation will be assigned based on rigorous assessment of claims of city governments, citizen feedback and independent observation.

            As per the Survey Toolkit released today, cities and towns will prepare over the next six months before field assessment begins on the fourth of January next year with survey results scheduled to be announced on March 26, 2018.

            Under Swachh Survekshan-2016, 73 cities with a population of million plus each and all state capitals were ranked in which Mysuru, Chandigarh and Tiruchirapalli emerged as the cleanest cities in that order. In the 2017 Survey, 434 cities with a population of one lakh plus each and state capitals were assessed in which Indore, Bhopal and Visakhapatnam were the cleanest cities.

AAR/KM

 

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