GHMC gets Clean City Award for 2023, Commissioner Ronald Rose receives

NEW DELHI: The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) received a National award for a 5-star rating in the Garbage Free Cities Protocol in Swachh Survekshan 2023 from Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi on Thursday.

D. Ronald Rose, Commissioner of GHMC received the award on behalf of GHMC. R. Upender Reddy, additional commissioner (Sanitation), GHMC, Soma Bharath project manager, SBM, GHMC, Manjula, sanitary field assistant, Kapra circle were also present.

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GHMC has been winning the ‘Swachh Survekshan’ award every year for keeping the city clean. Awards are given based on the public opinion. The city was earlier given a 3-star rating for its effective garbage disposal protocol. It was certified as a water-plus city for two consecutive years for its wastewater treatment protocol. Wastewater is treated at various STPs before discharging them protecting the environment from groundwater pollution.

'Swachh Survekshan - 2023' provides ranking of the Cities, separately for more than one lakh population cities (national ranking) and those below one lakh (state and zonal rankings).

It is based on assessment of progress from April 2022 to March 2023 under Swachh Bharat Mission Urban covering 4416 cities. The objective of the survey is to encourage large-scale citizen participation and create awareness amongst all sections of society about the importance of working together towards making towns and cities a better place to live in.

Swachh Survekshan 2023 has been conducted in 4 phases as league to ensure sustainability

of cleanliness outcomes throughout the year. The annual cleanliness survey of Swachh Survekshan-2023 has been conducted between August & September 2023 by MoHUA.

The following five awards have been awarded to Hyderabad City under Swachh Survekshan-2023:

1. 9th Clean City in India

2. 5 Star-rated Garbage Free City in India

3. Clean city in Telangana

4. First 5-Star rated city in Telangana (Population > 1 lakh)

5. Re-certified as Water PlusCity

Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs launched the Protocol for Star Rating of Garbage Free cities to institutionalize a mechanism for cities to achieve Garbage Free status, and to motivate cities to achieve higher degrees of cleanliness. The star rating protocol builds on aspirations of cities to progress towards higher standards of “Swachhata”.

The protocol is designed in a way as to enable cities to gradually evolve into model (7-star) cities, with improvements in cities’ overall cleanliness.

The protocol has been devised in a holistic manner including components that are critical drivers for achieving garbage-free status, such as door-to-door collection, segregation at source, sweeping in residential, commercial, and public areas, provision of litter and storage bins, processing of wet and dry waste, responsibilities of bulk waste generators towards on-site waste processing, penalties, spot fines & user charges, scientific landfill, cleanliness of drains and water bodies, screening of nalas, plastic waste management, managing construction & demolition waste, beautification with sustainability, resolution of citizen complaints covering issues related to littering, garbage dumping, overflowing litter bins.

Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation has been declared as 5 – Star city. In GFC Star Rating - 2023, 3 ULBs declared as 7 Star, 12 ULBs declared as 5 Star and 49 ULBs are declared as 3 Star.

Water Plus:

A city, ward, circle, zone can be declared as ‘Water Plus’ provided all wastewater released from households, commercial establishments, drains, nalas is treated to a satisfactory level(as per CPCB norms), before releasing the treated wastewater to the environment.

Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation has been certified as Water Plus by MoHUA on 20th August 2021 becoming the first local body of Telangana to achieve this remarkable fleet. Further, GHMC has applied for Water Plus re-certification for the year 2023. For this certification, the GHMC was assessed through third-party inspection from December 9th,2023 for 10 days. In 2023, MoHUA re-certified Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation as Water Plus City.