Mumbai, May 22, 2020

Navi Mumbai has been rated 5-star in the new list of garbage free cities under the Star Rating Protocol of Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs for the assessment year 2019-2020. A crucial factor which has helped the city clinch the award is the use of technology for garbage collection, enabling 100 per cent garbage pick-up.

The task of garbage collection is not easy, as the city generates around 700 metric tonnes of garbage per day, according to the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC).

Tushar Pawar, Deputy Municipal Commissioner (solid waste management), says NMMC has been using technology to track the movement of garbage collection vehicles and to ensure timely lifting of waste. “NMMC has a robust system of tracking each and every trash bin in the city. There are microchips affixed to every bin; the civic body uses GPS mechanism to track garbage collection” he said.

NMMC uses Waste trucks take rounds every eight hours. All these trucks are equipped with Radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips, GPS and GPRS and their movement, route and location are tracked through an app.

The residents in Navi Mumbai said they have never faced an issue of non-lifting of garbage. Rajnikant Raju, a resident of Kharghar, Navi Mumbai said “we are proud of this Garbage Free City title, it is a well-deserved recognition and it would further encourage the authorities in maintaining the cleanliness of the city”.  

Another resident, Sandeep Naik said “in the backdrop of Covid 19, a garbage free city remains out greatest strength”.  A few other residents however felt that Navi Mumbai although enjoying 5 star status, still has some way to go to catch up with the likes of Indore, which have made name internationally.

The overall performance of Maharashtra has been outstanding in the results of the Star Rating of Garbage Free Cities. 34 out of 65 3-star cities and 41 out of 70 1-star cities in the country are from the state. The 34 3-star cities include Chandrapur, Dhule, Jalgaon, Jalna, Thane and Mira-Bhayandar while 41 1-star cities include Ahmednagar, Akola, Nashik, Vasai-Virar and Kalyan-Dombivili.

The Star Rating Protocol has been devised in a holistic manner including components such as cleanliness of drains and water bodies, plastic waste management, managing construction & demolition waste, etc. which are critical drivers for achieving garbage free cities. While the key thrust of this protocol is on Solid Waste Management, it also takes care of ensuring certain minimum standards of sanitation through a set of prerequisites defined in the framework.

Altogether 1,435 cities / urban local bodies had applied for Star Rating Assessment.  During the assessments, 1.19 crore citizen feedbacks and over 10 lakh geo-tagged pictures were collected and 5,175 solid waste processing plants were visited by 1,210 field assessors.While 698 cities cleared the desktop assessment, 141 cities have been certified with Star Rating during field assessment. 

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CP

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