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25,000 cycle-rickshaws for garbage collection

In a decision that could change the sanitation scenario in villages, Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao on Tuesday announced supply of 25,000 cycle-rickshaws to gram panchayats for collection of garbage, allocation of sites for garbage yards, graveyards and construction of soak pits to address the problem of drainage water.

One cycle-rickshaw would be given for every 750 population and their maintenance would be taken care of by the village local bodies. Except for sweeping of main streets, that too only in a few villages, there is no organised system in vogue for collection of garbage from houses and dumping it in a yard.

The Chief Minister made the announcements at a day-long meeting on Grama Jyothi programmes held on the campus of Agricultural University here and attended by several ministers, senior officers, collectors, joint collectors, police officers, zilla parishad chief executive officers, district panchayat officers and mandal level change agents.

He also announced increasing the limit of expenditure of gram panchayats to 50 per cent of their income from the existing 30 per cent. The relaxation would enable the panchayats to increase the salaries of their sanitation workers and other staff.

Stating that qualitative development had not taken place in villages even seven-decades after independence, he said it was time to mobilise the collective force of rural people to transform villages into agents of change. Mr. Chandrasekhar Rao tried to motivate the officers and other functionaries to be part of Grama Jyothi to draw inspiration from the struggle for statehood to Telangana stating that nothing was impossible if sustained effort was made.

“There will be some forces including parties who would be out to scuttle the programme but those involved in it should not get de-motivated as the development of villages would lead to progress of the State,” the Chief Minister told the participants. He asked the MPs and MLAs to adopt one village each in every mandal in their constituencies to ensure their transformation.

The Chief Minister suggested that village development committees (VDCs) comprising sarpanches, MPTC/ZPTC members and Mandal Parishad Presidents prepare plans based on the prioritised requirements of villages.

Source: The Hindu

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