Civic bodies going all out to improve ranking

With just days left for Swachh Survekshan 2018 to hand out fresh rankings of cities based on their work done in sanitation, the municipalities in Delhi have started gearing up with last-minute touches to improve rankings.

The three civic bodies had fared poorly in the last rankings. The idea this time is to improve it by displaying their work in the field of waste segregation, door-to-door garbage collection and waste management.

The north, south and east corporations had ranked 279, 196 and 202, respectively in the Swachh Suvekshan 2017, out of a list of 4,300 cities.

The newly appointed Commissioner of the east Delhi civic body, Dr. Ranbir Singh, has been meeting officials and sanitation workers to assess the work progress.

A senior official of the civic body said that a special meeting was held on Saturday to chart progress.

One agenda

“We are confident that by working together we will be able to improve our ranking this year. Officials have been directed that the process of marking attendance through biometric should be completed on time so that we can track the attendance of our staff,” Dr. Singh said.

He also said that 50% of the civic body’s budget has been allocated to sanitation so there is no doubt that the ranking will improve. He said that only 18 months are left for the Swachh Bharat Mission deadline and the EDMC will set an example for the city to follow.

The SDMC is making use of social media to track work in each zone. WhatsApp groups have been formed and sanitation work by the staff is uploaded daily. “We are determined to make the SDMC area a clean city by implementing the best practices of waste management,” a senior SDMC official.

A north corporation official said that besides a WhatsApp group they have assigned zonal officials to start the practice of ‘employee of the month’ to encourage workers to work harder.