Retired health officer is Swachh Bharat coordinator

Nagpur: The Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) has appointed its retired health officer (sanitation) Dr Ashok Urkude as coordinator for Swachh Bharat Mission project after it failed to meet the October 1 deadline to make the city open defecation free.
The administration’s proposal to appoint Dr Urkude was cleared by the standing committee chairman Sudhir Raut in a meeting held on Friday. Dr Urkude’s term will be for 12 months that can be extended as per requirement.Under Swachh Bharat Mission, the NMC has to achieve two milestones — open defecation free and garbage free — to earn the tag of Swachh City. The civic body, till date, was able to make only 37 wards open defecation free out of the total 72 wards.
Now, a new deadline — January 26 — has been set, which is also unlikely to be met. Dr Urkude is having immense experience in solid waste management and can also be handed over other charge in the municipal health department.
The committee also discussed 30 other proposals. The committee gave its nod to the proposal seeking funds of Rs49.45 lakh for paying machine operators who executed NMC’s mass river-and-nullah cleaning drive. The panel also cleared the proposal to fix rate for hiring machineries for river and nullah cleaning drives.
The panel also cleared a proposal to allocate additional funds of Rs56.81 lakh for Swami Vivekananda Memorial that is under construction at Ambazari lake overflow point. The committee actually cleared proposals estimated to the cost of around Rs15.91 crore.