For the second consecutive year, Navi Mumbai has received a five-star rating in the list of garbage-free cities announced on Monday by Union Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Puri.
Indore, Mysore, Ambikapur, Surat and Rajkot have also received five stars. “Navi Mumbai is the only city from Maharashtra to get a five-star rating. The credit goes to each citizen who helped us achieve this and sanitation workers who kept the city clean,” Municipal Commissioner Annasaheb Misal said.
The ministry launched the Star Rating Protocol in January 2018 to motivate cities to achieve higher degrees of cleanliness. “Central government officials made surprise checks of the garbage collection and disposal system. They spoke to citizens to understand if the system was efficient. The officers would award points to each ward on 24 different parameters of solid waste management,” Mr. Misal said.
The main component of the rating is solid waste management and sanitation, which includes marking on cleanliness of drains and water bodies, plastic waste management, and managing construction and demolition waste.
As per the 2020 survey, six cities have been awarded five stars, 65 cities three stars, and 70 cities one star with the help of 1.19 crore citizen repsonses, over 10 lakh geo-tagged pictures, and visits to 5,175 solid waste processing plants by 1,210 field assessors.
While 34 cities from Maharashtra, including Chandrapur, Dhule, Jalgaon, Jalna, Thane and Mira-Bhayander, have been awarded three stars, 41 cities, including Ahmednagar, Akola, Nashik, Vasai-Virar and Kalyan-Dombivli, have been rated one star. Altogether, 1,435 urban local bodies had applied for the assessment.
