Onus of keeping city clean lies with people too: KTR

Hyderabad: Advising caution over the rising Covid-19 cases, municipal administration minister KT Rama Rao on Thursday asked mayor G Vijaya Laxmi and GHMC commissioner DS Lokesh Kumar to focus more on sanitation and keep the city clean.

Launching 300 Swachh auto tippers (

SATs

) here along with animal husbandry minister Talasani Srinivas Yadav, KTR said the second wave of Covid-19 is likely to hit the state soon and instructed the officials to be on total guard.

The minister said the onus of keeping the city clean lies with people too. “Swachhta is not only the responsibility of GHMC or the government, people also should participate in the drive in door-to-door collection of waste and garbage and segregation,” he said.

He said the GHMC had decided to press into service 650 new SATs and 300 of them were introduced in the first phase. “To make Hyderabad a garbage bin-free city, door-to-collection should increase. This is the reason why the SATs have been introduced,” he said.

The SATs will be pressed into service in all the six zones of the GHMC. Officials said the vehicles are hydraulically operated with a closed container. They have separators for segregation of wet and dry waste, which are in compliance with the Waste Management Rules of 2016.

Vijaya Laxmi said 10 more solid waste management plants will come up in the city. “Our goal is ‘Swacch Hyderabad’ with garbage-free streets and roads across the city. We are working on different techniques of solid waste management and waste collection systems to attain the tag of zero garbage city shortly, “ she said.

Gearing up for Swachh Survekshan Rankings 2021, the GHMC has removed bins from many parts of the city. Bins spotted by the central government teams attract negative marks in Swachh score card. In order to avoid piled up garbage in the city where the bins used to be there, SATs are being pressed into service, an official said.