National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) will introduce trash skimmers for surface cleaning of Ganga in six more cities in the first week of this month. The cities are Rishikesh, Haridwar, Garh Mukhteshwar, Sahibganj, Kolkata and Navdweep. Urban Local Bodies will be the nodal agency to monitor this work. State Programme Management Groups (SPMGs) and Collectorate office will be supervising these works under the aegis of NMCG at State and district level respectively.
River Surface Cleaning (RSC) work was introduce last year in Allahabad, Kanpur, Varanasi, Mathura-Vrindavan in Uttar Pradesh and Patna in Bihar. Trash skimmers were deployed at the foregoing locations and tonnes of floating waste was collected and disposed off in a proper manner. This task was performed under the CSR head and proved to be extremely effective. In the coming days, more towns will be identified for carrying out similar activities.
Namami Gange programme was launched as a mission to achieve the target of cleaning river Ganga in an effective manner with the unceasing involvement of all stakeholders, especially five major Ganga basin States – Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal.