PMO completes special Cleanliness Drive under Swachh Bharat Abhiyan

The Prime Minister’s Office today completed a special cleanliness drive under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan spanning over the fortnight. The drive has resulted in the weeding out of over 10,000 files, and the transfer of 1000 files of important archival value, to the National Archives of India.

The voluntary and participative effort by officers and staff of the PMO, under the guidance of Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister,  Nripendra Misra, also resulted in the cleaning and beautification of lawns at the western entrance of PMO, removal of scrap and dismantled material, and disposal of e-waste.

On taking over as Prime Minister in May 2014, Shri Narendra Modi had inspected the PMO, and called for maintaining cleanliness, which in turn would raise productivity. This is the third such major drive, after Shri Narendra Modi took charge.

Following the direction of the Prime Minister, several productivity and cleanliness related initiatives have been undertaken, including standardization of the processing of receipts and files. The processing of physical petitions and online petitions has been segregated and an “Electronic Mail Management System” has been introduced resulting in reduction of time in the processing of public petitions from one month to one day. Further, on line VVIP letter Monitoring System (VLMS), Meeting Management System and Dash Board System have been introduced, which increased the efficiency of the system and decreased the time consumed in the process considerably.

Over the period since May 2014, more than one lakh files have been weeded out. As a result two record rooms became available for alternative use. Auction of old unused items also resulted in freeing two rooms. New workstations have been installed as part of progressive standardisation of work environment.

These efforts helped to free 1800 square feet of office space within the PMO premises at South Block. This space now accommodates around 50 officials of Public Wing of the PMO, which earlier functioned from Rail Bhawan, due to space constraints at South Block.

Thus the effects of drive for cleanliness and system improvement inspired by the ideals of the Prime Minister are clearly visible.