Imphal, Dec 27: Manipur Housing and Urban Development Department sees hope in making urban areas of Manipur a garbage free zone in the coming years. With the solid waste management plant at Lamdeng in Imphal west all set to re-launch from January 4 next year , authority of the MAHUD Department are now relieved as the Solid Waste Management plant may require more solid waste than produced by the total household in the state. What is worried is the sincerity of the representatives of the local bodies particularly those in urban areas. During a one day media sensitization programme on Swachh Survekshan 2018 organised by the Directorate of information and Pubic Relation (DIPR) in collaboration with the MAHUD Department at City Convention here in Imphal, Director of MAHUD Department Gitkumar Nepram said that the Solid Waste Management Plant at Lamdeng which had already started functioning but stop for some time will start operational from January 4, 2018. At present the waste management site has been handed over to a Ahmedabad based private Company called IEC-TSL Ingenious Energy and will start producing electric energy from the solid waste from January or February . Gitkumar further added that an agreement had already been signed between the company , MAHUD and the MSPDCL that the electric energy produced by the company will be procured by the MSPDCL and the solid waste required for producing the energy will be supplied by the IMC. As of now the solid waste disposed at Lamdeng is being managed at the cost of Rs. 350 per ton. This will be charged until the company produced energy and sold it to the MSPDCL. The MAHUD Director further added that at present a total of around 120 ton of solid waste are being dump at Lamdeng per day . And the Company will require the similar ton of solid waste for producing energy per day . This means solid waste from other municipal areas of the state like Thoubal, Bishnupur Kakching Sugunu will also be required. For this the MAHUD had plant to establish Transfer station at Thoubal using latest technology . For that fund had already been sanctioned under the NLCPR. However , it is the sincerity of the representatives of the urban local bodies that is required in making the plant successful as it is the only means for keeping the urban areas garbage free zone. Ngangom Uttam, Executive Director MAHUD said that ss a prelude to encouraging cities to improve urban sanitation, Minister of Housing and Urban Af fairs (formerly Ministry of Urban Development) had conducted ‘Swachh Survekshan-2016’ survey for the rating of 73 cities in January 2016 followed by ‘Swachh Survekshan-2017’ conducted in January- February 2018 ranking 434 cities. In a bid to scale up the coverage of the ranking exercise and encourage towns and cities to actively implement mission initiatives in a timely and innovative manner , MoHUA now proposes to conduct its third survey to rank all 4041 cities based on assessment of progress from January 2017 till December 2017 under Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban (SBM- U). 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. Additionally , the survey also intends to foster a spirit of healthy competition among towns and cities to improve their service delivery to citizens, towards creating cleaner cities, Ng, Uttam added while elaborating on how the judgement of a clean city will be made. In order for cities to reap the maximum developmental benefits from the survey , concerted efforts are being taken to strengthen the capacities of the cities to understand the modalities and spirit of the survey . In addition to giving towns and cities more time to prepare for the survey , there will be intensive interactions with ULBs to familiarize them with the survey methodology , survey process and output indicators, and also clarifying their expectations from the survey . Since citizen participation is a very crucial component of this survey , social media and other traditional media channels will be used strategically at both national, state and city levels in order to educate citizens about the objectives of the survey and survey methodology , as well as to reinforce the importance of their participation in the survey , in order to ensure significantly higher levels of participation from all citizens
