BMC has proposed an annual expenditure of around Rs 136 crore for the new scheme, which will cover 10,309 units in slum areas that are not adequately served by its regular sanitation services.
Mumbai: BMC is set to replace its 13-year-old Swachh Mumbai Prabodhan Abhiyan (SMPA)-Adopted Settlement Scheme with a revamped Brihanmumbai Sanitation Services Scheme, under which sanitation work in slum pockets will be monitored through before-and-after photographs and GPS-based real-time tracking. The civic body has proposed an annual expenditure of around Rs 136 crore for the new scheme, which will cover 10,309 units in slum areas that are not adequately served by its regular sanitation services. The move comes amid concerns over the quality of sanitation work under the existing system, which has been in place since the year 2013. Under the revised scheme, a unit will comprise 150 families or 750 residents. An eligible organisation will be assigned a settlement comprising a minimum of five and a maximum of 15 such units. The organisations will receive Rs 90,000 per month per unit for basic sanitation work and another Rs 9,000 per month towards sanitation material and equipment, including masks, gloves, jackets, gumboots and raincoats, besides daily record-keeping and mobile phone use. The total monthly grant will thus be Rs 99,000 per unit. A monthly assessment will be conducted and one organisation will be selected through a draw based on its performance scores to receive a Rs 21,000 award.
The expenditure will be met from the Solid Waste Management department’s budget. Under the SMPA scheme, a single organisation was responsible for multiple activities, including lane cleaning, door-to-door garbage collection, cleaning of garbage bins and public toilets, drain cleaning, cleaning of roads up to 20ft wide, and creating awareness about cleanliness. One of the key changes will be greater documentation and monitoring of the work. Organisations will be required to upload photographs of the area before and after sanitation work, while GPS-based monitoring will enable BMC to track the work in real time. The civic administration hopes the measures will make organisations more accountable and provide a record against which the quality and extent of work can be assessed. The new scheme has been given the slogan ‘Our Community, Our Pride, Our Health’, and will focus on slum settlements where regular BMC sanitation services do not reach adequately. The civic administration has also proposed incentives for better-performing organisations.
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Participating organisations will also be permitted to use Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds to provide healthcare facilities to sanitation workers, according to the proposal. Download the TOI App.