Emphasizing an attitudinal change among all the stakeholders towards achieving the goal of making India a clean and healthy nation, Deputy Chief Minister, Nirmal Singh today called for decentralized solutions, ensuring sustainability of improved sanitation infrastructure besides services and enforcement.The Deputy Chief Minister, while addressing at a one day workshop on “Swachh Survekshan -2018” held under Swachh Bharat Mission, said that this first Pan-India survey is the largest of its kind in the world envisaging measurement of citizen connect with sanitation outcomes impacting lives of 40 crore people.The event was organised by the Directorate of Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) and Jammu Municipal Corporation (JMC) in collaboration with Union Urban Ministry.Necessitating the significance of ensuring a quality and hygienic environment to the people for a healthy society, the Deputy CM said that the government is according special focus on making the vulnerable areas of the state completely open defecation free. ” This would be first step towards creating a healthy and hygienic environment for the under privileged segments of the society”, he maintained.
Elaborating on the objective of launching this Swachh Survekshan, the Deputy CM said that the focus of the programme was on familiarising the participants with the revised cleanliness survey norms and parameters, besides introducing them to the toolkit, 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, released by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs.The Deputy CM, while throwing light on the importance of this vital survey in Swachh Bharat Mission, said that this comprehensive survey will assess availability of water connections to toilets, recovery of operationa and maintenance costs of community and public toilets and SOLID Waste Management infrastructure through user charges, advertisement revenue, municipal taxes etcetera.Referring to measures needed to be initiated in the state on this account, the Deputy CM emphasised the participants to make optimum use of available technology and connected resources to ensure that the Jammu and Kashmir emerges as one of the cleanest states in the “Swachh Survekshan -2018.” In this regard, he exhorted upon the need of collective and coordinated efforts of all the stakeholders to make this programme a big success.Commissioner JMC, M Raju, Director ULBs, Sushma Chouhan, National PMU,SBM(U), MoHUA Anil Parkash, Deputy Director ULB, B.S Katoach, Chief Executive officers, Executive Officers besides other senior officers of JMC and ULBs were present on the occasion.