City third cleanest in country

Sandeep Rana

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, May 16

Taking a big leap, Chandigarh jumped to the third spot from the previous 11th in a cleanliness survey conducted by the Central Government. The results were announced on Wednesday.

The City Beautiful was declared the third cleanest city behind Indore and Bhopal, which stood first and second, respectively. Chandigarh Tribune had reported in these columns on Tuesday that the MC was confident of figuring among the top three. 

The detailed individual city scores in various categories of the nationwide survey are yet to be declared. Compared to the previous surveys, this year’s exercise allocated substantial weightage to the feedback from citizens based on their daily experience.

In the previous survey, Chandigarh had slipped to the 11th rank mainly due to poor performance in the citizen feedback category. Following this, the civic body had made over 35,000 people download the Swachh Bharat App by organising various events. Their complaints were addressed online in a time-bound manner. This took the city in the citizen category to the third place from the 39th.

 The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs conducted its third survey to rank 4000+ cities based on assessment of progress from January 2017 till December 2017.

More needs to be done

Even as the MC has been declared the third cleanest city in the country, it has failed to resolve several issues.

Despite launching the waste segregation project with much fanfare, the corporation could not implement the wet and dry waste segregation scheme. It spent a whopping Rs 2.20 crore on buying blue and green bins. 

It has also failed to resolve the waste processing issue with the JP processing plant. A major chunk of the municipal waste is being thrown in the open dumping ground at Dadu Majra, leading to trouble for local residents. The firm has failed to properly process the waste. Public toilets are also in bad shape. Due to a fund crunch, contractors have stopped several works, affecting cleanliness too.

Quotes

It is a matter of pride not only for me but for all residents of Chandigarh. Our joint efforts have paid off.

Davesh Moudgil, Mayor

All worked hard on the ground. Safai karamcharis made efforts to keep the city clean. 

Saurabh Mishra, MC Addl Commissioner

The Governor, Adviser, Home Secretary and the Mayor all supported us. There was also citizen partnership, which made it possible.

Jitender Yadav, MC Commissioner