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What is the News?
Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) has released the revised protocol of rating garbage-free cities titled ‘Azadi@75 Star Rating Protocol of Garbage Free Cities- Toolkit 2022′
What is the Star Rating Protocol of Garbage Free Cities?
The Star Rating Protocol was launched by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs in 2018.
Aim: To institutionalize a mechanism for cities to achieve Garbage Free status, and to motivate cities to achieve higher degrees of cleanliness.
Under this protocol, Cities are required to carry out self-assessment and self-verification for achieving 1-star, 3-star, 5-star and 7-star garbage-free ratings. It also ensures the involvement of citizen groups for a transparent system of self-declaration.
Further, the self-declaration is further verified through an independent third party agency appointed by MoHUA.
What are the changes made in the Revised Star Rating Protocol of Garbage Free Cities-Toolkit 2022?
Firstly, the Star Rating Protocol of Garbage Free Cities has been aligned with the priorities of the Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban(SBM) 2.0.
Note: Under SBM-U 2.0, a key objective is to make every urban local body at least 3-star Garbage Free, as per the Star Rating protocol.
Secondly, the earlier 25 components/indicators for star rating have now been reduced to 24, of which only 16 indicators are mandatory for 1-star and 3-star levels. The remaining eight indicators are aspirational in nature and will be relevant for 5-star and 7-star aspirants.
Thirdly, higher weightage has been allotted to the door-to-door collection of garbage, source segregation, waste processing and dumpsite remediation.
Fourthly, new components pertaining to IEC, capacity building, revenue from the sale of waste by-products have been added to encourage cities to build an ecosystem to strengthen the waste management system
Fifthly, after seeing the impact star rating certification has made to improve on-ground waste management scenarios of the cities, the release of funds has been made conditional, subject to an urban local body (ULB) achieving at least 1-star certification.
Lastly, the entire process of applying for certification and subsequent assessment has been simplified and made completely digital, paperless.
Source: This post is based on the article ‘MoHUA launches roadmap to make Urban India ‘Garbage Free’ published in PIB on 25th Dec 2021.
