GWMC on a mission to get Clean City tag

Warangal: Ahead of Swachh Survekshan-2017, the Greater Warangal Municipal Corporation (GWMC) is giving top priority to cleanliness and sanitation drives, and solid waste management.

Mayor N Narendar, Commissioner Shruti Ojha and the entire civic body is busy in conducting meetings and organising awareness programmes on cleanliness in every nook and corner of the city.

All the corporation officials and staff were asked not to take leave until the survey is done. The Swachh Survekshan team, which will visit various wards of the city from January 27 to 29, will inspect cleanliness and give points based on which, a city can bag awards at both State and Central levels.

The Swachh Survekshan would be carried in four parts covering technical aspects of sanitation improved in the city (900 marks), visual observation by Quality Council of India (QCI) team (500 marks), citizens’ feedback on cleanliness of the city (450 marks) and finally Swachhata app (covering 150 marks).

The GWMC is going to face a litmus test in its bid to get the ‘Clean City tag’ and this time, it has to face major challenges of negative marking and people’s opinion.

The GWMC launched ‘Swachhata’, a mobile app, one month ago under the Central government’s ‘Swachh Bharat Mission’ in which residents can capture and send photographs of violators to the civic body to take action. The initiative is to ensure a garbage free city.

When it comes to Swachhata App, as per the directives of SWM, five per cent of the total population of the city must download the app. At present, only 4,000 of more than eight lakh population had downloaded the app.

Even after several awareness programmes, a section of the people are reluctant to follow the guidelines and do not bother to maintain the beauty of the city.

The containers (dustbins) on either side of the 100-feet road in the KU, road number 3 of Reddy Colony, Indira Nagar are filled with garbage and seen overflowing from past two days.

Rajendar, a resident of Reddy Colony said, “Many people are afraid to question the violators, who litter in public places, as it could lead to a clash between them.”

The city may lose 40 marks as the progress on construction of individual toilets had been dismal due to financial constraints. However, the city has achieved 100 per cent in community toilets.

In a recent meeting held at GWMC office, Additional Commissioner Shahid Masood suggested the contractors to speed up the construction works of toilets, which are pending.

He also said, “We organised meetings with business persons, management of educational institutions, students, representatives of voluntary organisations, NGO’s and peoples representatives on cleanliness drives and conducted mass awareness campaigns to keep the city clean.”

The Quality Council of India (QCI) team will visit various places in the city under 11 categories, such as temples, public toilets, markets, railway and bus stations to check sanitation and maintenance. This time, 500 cities in the country will compete for the clean city tag as against only 73 cities last year.

Medical and Health Officer Raja Reddy suggested the officials to take all necessary steps for arranging big garbage containers at several places hoping that residents and garbage collectors will dump their wastes in them along with asking the owners of the shops present in tri cities to arrange small dust bins in front of their shops for discarding the wastes.

“Securing a good position in the survey is very important as it will be taken into consideration by the Centre to allocate funds to civic bodies,” City Mayor Narendar observed.

By: Puli Sharath Kumar