'Broombastic' beginning

SURAT: It was 20 years ago when the plague outbreak woke up Surat to the need of keeping the city free of filth.
On Thursday too, lakhs of citizens wielded the brooms and cleaned up city's roads as they joined the Swacch Bharat campaign on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti.
From early morning, citizens were seen sweeping the roads and lanes near by their houses. They were joined by health workers of Surat Municipal Corporation and the clean-up was taken up in each ward.All 38 wards were covered by different teams and waste was cleaned up and segregated. At many places, private premises were fined for keeping their places dirty.
Some of the areas that saw aggressive cleaning up operations were Udhna , Limbayat , Varacha and Katargam zones. All politicians including mayor, MLA's , MPs, councilors and administrators also joined in their area for cleaning up of roads, streets waste boxes. Some people who kept their homes and court yards cleaned were even presented with flowers by local leaders.
Mayor Niranjan Janjmera said, "This is a campaign that is very close to Surtis' hearts as we have earned a reputation of being one of the cleanest cities of the country. Now it is time to take a step ahead and reach international standards."
According to an estimate, nearly 400-500 metric tones (MT) waste was gathered from the city just in three hours from 9 am to 12 noon.
In Surat district too, all 10 talukas and more than 1,500 villages took up the cleaning exercise on the. Dr Rajender Kumar, district collector, said, "It is just the beginning and we would like to keep this momentum going for another five years."
"We have set long-term goals for the campaign under which having a solid disposal plant for a cluster of villages and toilets for each home are high on agenda," he added.
City and district administration is also planning to levy sanitation tax and penalty for offenders on all levels starting from village to Surat city.
Surat district has 90,000 homes without toilets. However, the administration feels that they will be able to achieve the target in two years.