Swachh Bharat Ads in Pune Raise Questions Over Excessive Spending

Pune, 25th October 2024: As part of the Central Government’s Swachh Bharat Mission, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has placed cleanliness-promoting advertisements on public walls across Pune. The Solid Waste Management Department of PMC is now reviewing the expenditure associated with this initiative after discovering that many of last year’s advertisements remain in good condition.

Since these advertisements are still intact, only the competition year has been updated from 2023 to 2024. However, concerns have been raised over the substantial funds spent on this project, prompting the department to request detailed reports from ward offices.

The Solid Waste Management Department had allocated ₹14.5 lakh to each ward office for cleanliness advertisements on public walls. This year, the same campaign is being renewed, but some locations reported costs as high as ₹1 lakh for the updates. In many cases, the only change made was altering the number ‘3’ to ‘4’ to reflect the new year. Despite this, significant sums have been spent by the ward offices, even though only a few thousand rupees were originally expected to be necessary.

Taking these concerns seriously, the Solid Waste Management Department has requested detailed expenditure reports from all field offices. Officials have indicated that a thorough investigation will be conducted.

Sandeep Kadam, Deputy Commissioner of the Solid Waste Management Department at PMC, stated, “The department has asked for a report on the funds allocated to field offices, and action will be taken against those responsible if any discrepancies are found.”