Hyderabad: The Centre would standardise rates for water kiosks, toilets and other tourist facilities across all sites hosting Swach Iconic Places (SIPs). There would be greater focus on providing sanitary facilities, irrespective of the lack of sponsorship.
The Centre would also design individual logos for Swachh Iconic Places (SIPs), reflecting their signficance. Swachh Iconic places will have standard guidelines to be implemented by all cities shortlisted by the Centre. These guidelines would be available on the Swachh Bharat portal.
The Centre will also have a dashboard and portal to collect information on the progress of the Swachh Iconic Places (SIP) project, a national review of the Swachh Bharat Mission was told.
Earlier in the day, the third list of iconic cities was released. Though the conference was held i the city, there was no place from Telangana state on the list. The third list includes the Sri Raghavendra Swamy Mutt at Mantralayam, Hazarduari Palace of West Bengal, the Sri Sarveshwar Mahadev temple of Haryana and the Vidur Kuti temple at Uttar Pradesh.
Also finding place on the list were Uttarakhand’s Mana village, Pangong Tso in Ladakh, Shri Nag Vasuki temple at Allaha-bad, Ema Keithel in Manipur, the Sree Dhar-ma Sastha temple of Pathanamthitta and Kanvashram in Uttarakhand.
Secretary Parameshwaran Iyer of the drinking water and sanitation ministry said: “Even though taking up Swachh activities like restoring iconic structures to their original glory is appreciated, their maintenance would be the key factor,” Mr Iyer said. GHMC commissioner B. Janardhan Reddy said public sector units should be more liberal in extending their support to such initiatives to improve sanitation at the SIP.
Mr Akshay Rout, director-general, ministry of drinking water and sanitation, said there had been a distinct improvement of sanitation facilities at 20 SIPs. “We are looking forward to more streamlined, focused and systematic sanitation development at each of the 30 sites in a time-bound manner,” he said.
He said nodal agencies had failed to brand their cities in the SIP projects and added the Centre would design special logos which have to be put up at the sites. “The logos will be designed according to the historical, religious and cultural importance of every iconic city,” he added.
The Centre had committed Rs 450 crore for the SIP programme of which Rs 192 crore had been spent. He said PSU corporate support was just one of the support areas. “Basically the focus is on absence of sanitation on that site and the need to do a good amount of sanitation there."
