The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) is deploying an additional fleet of 650 Swachh Autos, said the Minister for Municipal Administration and Urban Development, KT Rama Rao on Thursday. These vehicles come with higher lifting capacity of 1.5 tonne as against the earlier vehicles which had a capacity of 850 kg only.
Rama Rao who handed over 350 Swachh Autos to the beneficiaries for collection of garbage from the households at HMDA grounds besides IMAX theatre here, appealed to the households/citizens to cooperate with the sanitation staff by placing dry and wet garbage in separate bins.
This would help in improving efficiency in garbage collection and also in making Hyderabad a healthy city.
Instead of treating sanitation as a responsibility of government and the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) alone, citizens should also become part of the exercise, he said.
The Minister recalled the services
rendered by the sanitation staff during spread of Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown and described it as laudable. He suggested taking up a sanitation special drive keeping in view the present prevailing situation.
Mayor Gadwal Vijayalaxmi said these Swachh Autos were allotted to rag pickers/poor people under driver-cum-owner scheme with contribution of beneficiaries being 10 per cent while the rest 90 per cent was borne by the GHMC.
The 650 autos will be distributed across all 30 circles according to their requirement, she said adding that these vehicles were specially designed.
Minister for Animal Husbandry, Fisheries and Cinematography T Srinivas Yadav, MLA Danam Nagender, Deputy Mayor Mothe Srilatha, GHMC Commissioner Lokesh Kumar, zonal commissioners Praveenya, Ravi Kiran, Ashok Samrat, Srinivas Reddy, additional commissioners Kennedy, Santosh, and senior officials participated in the programme.