The Swacchta Sarvekshan rankings have come as a shocker for Patna, which has been placed in the 262nd position out of 434 Indian cities on the cleanliness scale. Neighbouring Biharsharif, 75km away in Nalanda, the home district of chief minister Nitish Kumar, has managed to find a place among the top 150 cities in the survey.
So what did Biharsharif, which ranks 147, do which Big Brother Patna could not?
For starters, the Biharsharif Municipal Corporation has introduced the bio-metric system of attendance for all labourers engaged in sanitation duty.
Though the Patna Municipal Corporation has installed biometric attendance machines for officials working in its various circles, the system is still not in place for the sanitation staff. Some of the biometric machines, which are at PMC offices for maintaining the attendance of the officials, are also lying defunct.
This assumes significance because residents in many localities of Patna claim that labourers don't turn up in their areas to collect the trash. However, PMC has more GPS-enabled garbage lifting machines than Biharsharif. "PMC has around 230 such machines against 32 of Biharsharif. But then, Biharsharif is area-wise smaller than Patna, so it can do the work more efficiently even with fewer number of GPS-enabled machines," said a source.
Biharsharif Municipal Corporation looks after an area of 23.3 square kilometre and it caters to a population of around 3 lakh as per the 2011 census. Patna Municipal Corporation, on the other hand, looks after 108 square kilometres and is responsible for around 16.82 lakh people according to the 2011 census.
The current population of Biharsharif is pegged at around 5 lakh, while Patna's has increased to about 22 lakh after the census period.
Biharsharif municipal commissioner Kaushal Kumar said the biometric system of attendance helped the corporation prevent proxy attendance of its sanitation staff.
"We have a bio-metric system of attendance for around 500 labourers who are engaged in sanitation duty. We have 150 permanent labourers with the corporation while around 350 labourers are working on contract basis. All of them use bio-metric system of attendance. The fingerprints of the 500 sanitation staff have been fed into the portable bio-metric attendance machines, which have been installed in all the 46 wards. The working hours of sanitation staff is from 6am to 2pm. Workers have been asked to make their attendance through biometric system by 7am while they have been asked to use the bio-metric attendance machine once again before 1.30pm. We cut a day's salary of those workers who fail to mark the attendance twice by 7am and by 1.30pm," said Kaushal.
The Biharsharif corporation not only has GPS-enabled garbage lifting machines, but it also has tie-ups with some of the petrol pumps which are supposed to do fuel refilling of its vehicles on a daily basis. "There is also an SMS system in place through which we get to know about the refilling of petrol in each machine. This has been done to ensure smooth transportation of the vehicles," added Kaushal.
The civic body has purchased state-of-the-art road sweeping machines worth around Rs 48 lakh and a super-sucker machine costing around Rs 1.24 crore.
The Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC) does not have such machines though it is in the process of procuring them, said commissioner Abhishek Singh. The Biharsharif Municipal Corporation had lent its truck-mounted road sweeping machine to PMC during Prakash Utsav for keeping city streets clean.
Biharsharif civic boss Kaushal explained how the machine works. "The sweeping brushes fitted underneath the trucks have special metallic bristles and suction nozzles. Besides, there are multi-bladed vacuum fans in the machine to ensure sufficient vacuum power. The machine has a suction capacity of 3-6 tonnes. This makes it possible to suck in maximum dust and rubble from the roads. There is also a high-pressure water spray bar mounted in front of the machine to wash roads."
"While other municipal corporations get silt removed from drains manually, we use the super-sucker machine which can remove around 500 litres of silt at a time. There is a dump point in the super-sucker machine wherein the silt removed from the drains is stored. The silt is finally dumped in the landfill site. We also dump silt in the agriculture fields on request as it works as manure. The municipal corporations which get silt removed manually can't do this," Kaushal said.
The Biharsharif corporation had started door-to-door garbage collection in all its wards in 2015; in Patna, the system started only last month and there too, residents have complained about the private agencies engaged in the work.
PMC commissioner Abhishek Singh admitted that the Biharsharif corporation had got an edge in infrastructure and manpower. "We don't have the road sweeping and super sucker machines. We are in the process of procuring them. Also, we have many vacancies unlike Biharsharif. It is easier for Biharsharif Municipal Corporation to implement its programmes because the area and population under it is much smaller than Patna. We are not satisfied with the on-site-verification results of the survey though," said Abhishek.
