Kolkata: Kolkata has been awarded with the best cities of 2016 award at the C40 Mayors Summit held in Mexico City, in recognition of its inspiring and innovative programme with regard to solid waste management.
The C40 Cities Awards recognise the best and boldest work being done by mayors to fight climate change and protect people from risks.
The city’s ‘Solid Waste Management Improvement Project’ has achieved segregation of waste at its source, with further waste segregation occurring at transfer stations, which has helped to eradicate open dumping and burning of waste and to limit the concentration of methane gas generated in landfill sites.
Kolkata is the only Indian city to receive the prestigious award, while other Indian cities namely Mumbai, Chennai and New Delhi also participated. “In India, only Kolkata Municipal Corporation has got this award, which is a matter of great honour for us. it is also a proof of the relentless effort that the state government under chief minister Mamata Banerjee is giving for the development of the state,” Dilip Yadav, chairman of the Uttarpara Municipality, said over phone after receiving the prestigious award from C40 Chair and Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes.
The significance of this project is not only in the achievements of climate change, but involvement of the lowest denominators of the society, the rag pickers or human vultures who are associated in the process. “The idea was not only to bring in a climate change but also a social change through this project. The project involves 100 per cent door-to-door collection of solid waste, segregation and recycling by way of composting, which is sold in the market and also earns for itself,” Onkar Singh-Meena, secretary municipal affairs and CEO of Kolkata Municipal Development Authority said.
“This award will encourage us to work even harder to make Kolkata the greenest city in the world,” Singh added. Other cities that won the award are Addis Ababa, Copenhagen, Curitiba, Sydney and Malborne, Paris, Portland, Seoul Shenzhen, and Yokohama.
The award has come at a time when Banerjee is pitching herself as a competitor to Prime Minister Narendra Modi ahead of the 2019 general elections. It will certainly add strength to the clamour of her being an effective administrator especially when climate change is such an important issue all over India.
