Manipur: Municipality officials rewarded for bringing laurels to the state

Our Correspondent

Imphal, Sep. 17 (EMN): Manipur Chief Minister Nongthombam Biren Singh on Thursday awarded the officials of Jiribam Municipal Counci l(JMC) and Kakching Municipal Council(KMC) for bagging the Cleanest City in North East India and Best City in citizen feedback awards under Swachh Survekshan 2020 which was organised by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs.

Cheques of INR 1 lakh and INR 50,000 along with mementoes were handed over to the officials of JMC and KMC during a loan distribution ceremony to the women vendors at Chief Minister’s Secretariat in Imphal on Thursday.

Manipur’s Jiribam becomes the cleanest town among towns with less than 25,000 populations in India’s North East Zone while Kakching bagged the Best City in citizen feedback awards.

The results were announced on August 20 this year.

Madhya Pradesh’s Indore city retained its position as the cleanest city in India for the fourth consecutive year while Gujarat’s Surat bagged the second spot, Maharashtra’s Navi Mumbai ranked third.

Swachh Survekshan was introduced by the government with the objective of generating large scale citizen participation in the Mission, along with inculcating a spirit of healthy competition among cities towards becoming India’s cleanest cities.

Swachh Survekshan 2020 survey which was carried out in 28 days, covered a total of 4,242 cities, 62 Cantonment Boards and 92 Ganga Towns and saw unprecedented participation of 1.87 crore citizens. This is the fifth edition of the survey that was introduced by PM Narendra Modi in January 2016. In the first edition of the survey, Mysuru won the award for the cleanest city of India.

During the loan distribution ceremony, Biren Singh distributed loans to a total of 1269 vendors from different districts to support them in resuming their vending activities which have been affected by the nationwide lockdown.

On August 25, similar loans were distributed to a total of 817 vendors of different districts.

PM-SVANidhi was launched by Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs on June 15 to provide affordable working capital loan to street vendors to resume their livelihoods that have been affected due to Covid-19 lockdown.

803 street vendors were benefitted under the Pradhan Mantri Street Vendor’s Atmanirbhar Nidhi – PM SVANidhi and 466 regular licensed vendors were provided assistance under the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana – SHISHU.

The scheme is valid until March 2022.Under this scheme, the street vendors, who were vending within the limits of an urban local body as on March 24, can avail working capital loan of up to 10,000, which is repayable in monthly instalments within a tenure of one year.