Centre earns Rs 254 cr from disposal of office scrap

The Centre freed up 37.19 lakh square feet of space in its offices and earned Rs 254.21 crore from disposal of scrap so far during a special drive launched earlier this month.

A similar exercise last October had led to freeing up of 12 lakh square feet of space and leading to earning of Rs 62 crore.

The government has a scrap disposal policy under Chapter 7 of General Financial Rules (GFR) 2017 and a special campaign on disposal of pendency and cleanliness was organised from October 2 in all ministries and departments at the Centre. This year's campaign will end on October 31.

Personnel Minister Dr Jitendra Singh reviewed the progress of the special campaign till October 25 and said significant progress has been achieved.

Singh said 40.52 lakh files were reviewed besides redressing 3,05,268 public grievances. During this period, 5,416 references from MPs were replied and 588 rules were eased.

In the last three weeks, the Department of Posts has conducted the cleanliness campaign in 17,767 post offices, the Ministry of Railways has conducted similar exercise in 7,028 Railway Stations, Department of Pharmaceuticals in 5,974 campaign sites, Department of Defence in 4,578 campaign sites and Ministry of Home Affairs in 4,896 campaign sites.

The special campaign included indoor and outdoor cleanliness campaign, disposal of scrap, weeding out of outlived records and disposal of pending references from the MPs, state governments, inter-ministerial references, parliament assurances and public grievances.

The government has also identified some best practices, which included an initiative by the Ministry of Railways in Bengaluru Railway Station to create a sculpture from discarded plastic bottles and a new rail coach restaurant at Guntur Railway Station.