Is your city cleaning at night: Inputs Sought

Since 2017 LocalCircles has taken up the cause of awareness about Cities cleaning at Night so there is less pollution and garbage in the day. Some municipalities have started taking this ON, albeit in a small way. Below are some of the issues you had identified, along with root causes and solutions.

We now seek your inputs on three things:
1) Is your municipality conducting any cleaning at night?
2) What are you doing to drive awareness with your municipal commissioner or district magistrate?
3) What can be done to implement night cleaning in your city?

How can India clean at night

1. Municipal workers could be deployed in shifts like in other industries
2. Modern equipment should be bought to assist in increasing worker efficiency
3. Workers who do the night shift should be given special allowances
4. The home dustbins could just be kept outside the house at nights for the municipality
to clear them
5. The process should be divided in two parts:
i. Cleaning group in Night Time (before 5 am)
ii. Observer & Inspection group before 8.00 am Day time
6. If public reports garbage anywhere in city after 8.00 am then Observer & Inspection group should be held responsible
7. Night shifts should be on a rotational basis
8. Private companies could be hired to assist the Municipality at nights
9. Home cleaning could be conducted in the second half of the day between 1 pm - 8pm and place garbage out at night
10.Offices could clean post closure starting 7/8 pm and place garbage out by 10 pm.
11.This process will also optimize utilization of collection resources, with faster collection and transfer

Here are some things that will have to be considered in the implementation:
1. Non-availability of street lights at night in many places
2. Supervising and managing the workers could be an issue
3. Attitude of officials - Resistance to a new process as it requires deviation from
existing routine. Also, it involves night working for some workers
4. Attitude of people - Hard to adopt a new system. At present household garbage is
taken away in the forenoon. In new system, garbage will go out at night
5. Households that employ individual part or full time help for cleaning will have to
ensure that cleaner is able to adjust their schedule and work from 1-8 pm timings. more