Clean-up drive earns government Rs 254 crore, frees up 37.19 lakh square feet space

Union Minister of State in the Prime Minister Office, Dr Jitendra Singh addressing the media

Home cleaning, especially during Diwali, may be backbreaking but it pays off, at least for the government which has not only earned Rs 254 crore by getting rid of the junk but also freed up 37.19 lakh square feet of space under a special cleanliness drive.

Union Minister of State in the Prime Minister Office Jitendra Singh has said the Swachhta Campaign 2.0 has earned the government more than Rs 254 crore.

“Over 40 lakh files reviewed, more than three lakh public grievances have been redressed, more than five thousand MP’s references replied and 588 rules eased during the said timeline,” Singh said as he briefed media on the progress of the campaign.

Significant progress has been made in week 3 of the campaign. More than 37.19 lakh square feet of space occupied by junk and scrap was cleared, he added.

Launched on October 2, the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, the campaign aims at ensuring timely and effective disposal of public grievances, references from Members of Parliament, state governments, inter-ministerial consultations and parliamentary assurances and disposal of scrap. The campaign concludes on October 31.

The cleanliness drives is being implemented in remote outstation offices, foreign missions and posts, attached and subordinate offices, besides citizen-centric swachhata initiatives.

The campaign has been seeing widespread participation of officials and citizens.

The ministry of mines and subordinate offices and department of economic affairs (DEA), too, reviewed their progress.

The ministry of mines and its field organisations achieved 90.51 percent of the cleanliness campaign and generated Rs 1.58 crore from scrap disposal, so far. It cleared a space of around 92,199 square feet.

The DEA fulfilled 13 pending parliament assurances against 19 in just two weeks. It disposed of 185 public grievances against 278 appeals and reviewed 1,520 of the 1,750 files, the government said.

Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Swachhta campaign was a testimony of the "whole of government" and "whole of nation" approach, which had ultimately assumed the form of a countrywide “Jan Andolan”, Singh said.

During the first phase, launched in October 2021, about 12 lakh sqft of space was freed up in offices and earned Rs 62 crore from scrap disposal.