GHAZIABAD: Barely three months after securing the 36th rank in the nationwide Swachh Survekshan Ghaziabad has added another laurel to its kitty for cleanliness.The district has topped the list in UP for Swachh Survekshan Grameen 2018 conducted by the Union drinking water and sanitation ministry.Door-to-door garbage collection by e-rickshaws was one of the initiatives which helped Ghaziabad secure the position among 6,867 villages that were surveyed across 685 districts in the country. “Of a total of 100 points, Ghaziabad scored 94.3 in Swachh Survekshan Grameen. Much of the credit goes to initiatives like employing e-rickshaws for door-to-door garbage collection in villages that were declared open defecation free (ODF) in August 2017,” district magistrate Ritu Maheshwari told TOI on Thursday.“Recently the administration had conducted a ‘garbage festival’ in the district, which helped create awareness on cleanliness and in turn played a key role in achieving the desired results,” she added.The idea of e-rickshaws for door-to-door garbage collection proved to be an instant hit. “Roads in rural areas is unsuitable for big garbage van to operate and e-riskhaws came out as a viable option. Gram panchayats collected funds from each family for the e-rickhaws which were used for collecting waste and dumping the same at designated places,” the DM said.For ODF, the district started preparations much in advance and under this scheme, some 22,000 toilets have been constructed till August 2017. “Ghaziabad’s rural area was among the first few which was declared ODF in August 2017 and this helped gain points in Swachh Survekshan Grameen,” she said.Proportionate distribution of garbage bin for dry and wet waste were installed at designated places, which helped deal with the problem of open air garbage dumping at undesignated places.“We laid stress on community buildings like schools, panchayat bhawans and anganwadi centres and religious places, where we carried out special cleanliness drives. To discourage villagers from dumping garbage at undesignated places, we even launched plantation drives at these spots and in the end, we succeeded in planting two lakh sapli-ngs in rural belts,” Maheshwari said.The marks were given under three heads which included on ODF parameter, citizen feed back and direct observation. “Nearly 45,000 citizen feedbacks were received that helped raise our points and eventually overall ranking,” she added.

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