10,000 files weeded out during major cleanliness drive at PMO

New Delhi: It was the typical exercise of 'charity begins at home'.

With Swacch Bharat being one of the most prominent initiatives of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a special cleanliness-cum-beautification drive was carried out in the Prime Minister's Office over the last 15 days.

The drive 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, a PMO statement said.

This was the third such major drive since Modi became the Prime Minister and altogether more than one lakh files have been weeded out since May 2014, it said.

As a result, two record rooms became available for alternative use, the statement said.

"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," the statement said.

After becoming the Prime Minister, Modi had inspected the PMO and called for maintaining cleanliness, saying it would raise productivity.

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 statement said.

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, online 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, the PMO said.

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," the statement said.