Swachhata Excellence Award for Hyderabad

Hyderabad: Hyderabad has received the Swachhata Excellence Award from the Swachh Bharat Mission. The GHMC was selected under the category of cities with a population of over one million for engaging community-based organisations and informal waste pickers in sanitation and solid waste management.

The award comes with Rs 10 lakh cash. The award is recognition for providing greater employment opportunities in the city as part of the Swachh Bharat Mission.

The award was given under the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Urban Livelihood Mission (DAY-NULM).

A press statement said that GHMC had hired unemployed, semi-skilled women and SHGs from every ward as Swachh community resource persons. These CRPs were trained and allotted 600 households each to promote source segregation and ensure that all households give segregated waste to the garbage collector.

The GHMC replaced tricycles with 2,500 Swachh auto tippers (SATs) to help effective door-to-door collection of garbage. The selected rag-pickers are SAT driver-owners, and their family members work as helpers to collect the waste from households. Each SAT is tied up with 500-600 households and collects Rs 50 per month. They earn another Rs 150 to Rs 200 per day by selling recyclables.