Absence of scientific treatment and zero recycling of solid waste is the main reason for Nagpur’s poor performance
Nagpur: In a development that puts Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) in bad light, Nagpur slipped to 27th rank, out of the 47 cities (above 10 lakh population category) in Swachh Survekshan-2022. The Second Capital, however, ranked 8th in Maharashtra, according to media reports.
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Monday 10 Feb. 2025
The public perception that Nagpur’s political and administrative leaderships have failed in ensuring cleanliness in Nagpur City, has been reflected in the Swachh Survekshan rankings declared on Saturday. As per the latest rankings, Nagpur had dipped four places — from 23rd position last year to 27th this year. Absence of scientific treatment and zero recycling of solid waste is the main reason for Nagpur’s poor performance.
The Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs released the rankings in which Nagpur city scored 4,171.92 marks out of 7,500 in the category of million plus cities. The marks were distributed in three categories — Service-level Programme, Certification, and Citizen Voice.
In the Service-level Programme, Nagpur bagged 1,826.76 marks out of 3,000. The city scored only 600 marks out of 2,250 in Certification, and 1,745.16 marks out of 2250 in Citizen Voice. In Garbage Free City (GFC) ranking, Nagpur got ‘zero’ marks out of 1,250, which is a matter of grave concern and reflects poorly on Nagpur Municipal Corporation administration. As per the ranking, city has performed well in door-to-door garbage collection, but has failed to fulfill the other criteria of GFC.
In GFC ranking, Scientific Waste Processing is a high scoring criterion. However, in the name of bioremediation, NMC is treating just the legacy waste in Bhandewadi. City generates 1,250 MT solid waste daily, but has no mechanism to recycle it. As per the GFC criteria, geo-mapping of wards and processing facilities is must to score marks, but it is still not up to the mark in Nagpur.
When it comes to enforcing plastic ban, like other cities, Nagpur has also implemented single-use plastic ban, but the result leaves much to be desired. NMC conducts raids in markets and godowns and seizes banned plastic on a regular basis. Still, plastic is in use in the market, reflecting shabby enforcement of plastic ban in the city. Here, it has lost marks this year.
As far as sweeping of public, commercial and residential areas is concerned, the NMC approach has been pretty inconsistent over the years. Some years ago, it started implementing the ‘bin-free city’ concept. Later on, it changed course and installed green and blue coloured bins at public places. Now, these bins have simply vanished and people dump garbage in open spaces or on the roadsides. Such lack of seriousness in approach was bound to have affected the city’s performance in Swachh Survekshan rankings.
Apart from these criteria, implementation of user fees, sale of waste by-products, at-source segregation of waste, citizen grievance redressal, waste reduction through on-site processing of wet waste, dumpsite remediation, cleaning of storm water drains and water bodies, bulk waste generators compliance, city beautification, IEC and capacity building also need to be adopted by every city to score marks in GFC ranking.
For the last three consecutive years, the NMC has been scoring absolutely zero marks in the garbage free city rankings category, which affected the overall ranking. In 2020 and 2021 too the city had scored similar marks in GFC category.
Under open defecation free category, it scored 600 marks. It however received a setback on its claim of treating sewage water and its reuse. It scored zero out of 300, as it is releasing treated water in polluted rivers, reports said.
