E -News Letter Sept-Oct 2015 Our Mission Green Shimla Clean Shimla CLEAN SHIMLA DRIVE A collaborative initiative for cleaning Jakhoo Hill An intensive cleanliness campaign, CLEAN SHIMLA DRIVE was organized at Shimla with the collaborative efforts of various stakeholders for cleaning of the historic Jakhoo Hill. The height of Jakhoo peak is 2,455 m (8,000 feet) above sea level, which is the highest peak of the Shimla and is well known for the legend that Lord Hanuman stopped there to rest while he was searching for the Sanjivni Booti to revive Lakshman in the Epic Ramayana. H.P. State Legal Service Authority (HPSLA) organized the event under the able supervision of Justice Sanjay Karol, Executive Chairman of HPSLA and named it as CLEAN SHIMLA DRIVE. Municipal Corporation Shimla was the lead partner in organizing the event by planning the whole activity for clean-up of Jakhoo Hill. The other stakeholder departments in the Clean Shimla Drive were Education Department, Department of Environment Science and Technology and Department of Forests, HP. Around 1000 students from different schools of Shimla city joined hands to clean the Jakhoo Hill. Hon ble Chief Justice and Patron-in-Chief of the (HPSLA), Justice Mansoor Ahmad Mir flagged off the campaign from historical ridge ground of Shimla. Justice Rajiv Sharma, Justice Tarlok Singh Chauhan, Justice Sureshwer Thakur, Shrawan Dogra (Advocate General), Ashok Sharma (Asstt. Solicitor General of India)..(contd on page.3)
CLEAN SHIMLA DRIVE
C.B. Borowalia (Registrar General), Deepak Shanan (Addl. Chief Secretary, Environment Science & Technology), Narender Chauhan (Addl. Chief Secretary-cum-Chief Election Officer), Dinesh Malhotra (Deputy Commissioner, Shimla), Pankaj Rai (Commissioner, MC Shimla), Yunus (ADC, Shimla) and other staff from all stakeholder departments were also present during the flag off. After flag off, all the participants started for Jakhoo Hill, after reaching there, 8 different teams were formed and diverted into 8 different routes terminating at different sides of the Hill. Each team included more than 100 students, Staff from MC Shimla and other departments. MC Shimla had prepared detailed route plan for each team along with the intermediate pick-up points. Distance of each route was roughly 2KM upto the termination point. The teams collected garbage littered on or along the pathway on their respective routes in garbage sack provided to them. Once filled, these garbage sacks were emptied into the intermediate arrangements done by MC Shimla like bins or garbage vehicle. During the flag off, the Swachhta Vahan, a dedicated vehicle deployed for addressing sanitation complaints in the city was also put on display to publicize the Swachhta Helpline launched by MC Shimla during first anniversary of Swachh Bharat Mission In total, all of the teams collected more than 1000Kgs of waste, which was transported to Solid Waste Management facility of MC Shimla for further processing Media Coverage..
BRIEF NOTE ON SWACHHTA HELPLINE Shimla Municipal Corporation launched Swachhta Helpline 1916 on the first anniversary of Swachh Bharat Mission. The Swachhta Helpline (SHL) was launched by Hon ble Chief Minister of the state on 02.10.2015. The SHL is replica of 108-Helpline which is a Health Helpline for attending emergencies in respect of patients, accidents reporting etc. This innovative idea of SHL was conceived as Shimla is a tourist destination and lot of littering was being observed across the city and on account of shortage of staff & movement of vehicle for only 8hrs, Municipal Corporation Shimla was not in position to counter this problem & further there was no system in place to address the issue of sanitation. Though Municipal Corporation takes all possible steps to prevent littering but through this helpline, residents of the city too are able to play an active role in keeping the city clean. The helpline number is a centralized contact point for any complaint pertaining to sanitation within the city.
MC Shimla is also in process of carrying out IEC activities such as display of banners, newspaper advertisement, advertisement on local TV network and by other means to promote the Swachhta Helpline number so that more and more people participate in the initiative to keep the city litter free.