Patna: The Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC) is gearing up for Swachh Sarvekshan to be carried out by the Union ministry of housing and urban affairs from January 4, 2018.
PMC commissioner Abhishek Singh held a meeting with executive officers, executive engineers, city managers and other officials on Saturday in which new parameters of the survey were discussed which have been introduced in the 2018 survey along with the action plan of the corporation for taking part in the survey. The Swachh Sarvekshan survey assumes significance as cities which would fared well would get central assistance in terms of funding.
In the last two editions of the survey, the city could not receive a very good ranking. While it was ranked 70 out of 73 cities covered in 2016, in the 2017 edition of the survey, it got the 262nd position out of 434 cities.
Though the state capital's ranking had improved a little bit in the 2017 survey, it's ranking was far behind towns like Biharsharif and Kishanganj. Biharsharif and Kishanganj ranked 147 and 257, respectively, in the 2017 survey.
On Saturday's meeting, Singh said: "Today, we discussed what we can do, how we are going to do, what's the timeline and what are the rules and responsibilities in detail. Last time, many things were in the pipeline due to which we couldn't get a better ranking. One of the components, the door-to-door garbage collection programme, had not been started last year. Besides, we also didn't have auto tippers."
Commissioner Singh, while explaining why the state capital could not fare better in the last survey, added: "While last time we had installed only 200 dustbins, now 1,000 more litterbins have been installed. Public toilets also could not be started. This time, we have started some public toilets. We also didn't have open defecation free (ODF) wards which we have now. We have decided to achieve 75 per cent wards ODF status by December 31. Other initiatives would also be taken."
PMC sources, however, pointed out that getting a better ranking would not be a cakewalk this time too.
"Many new indicators have been added in the 2018 survey. In the 2017 survey, there were points on door-to-door garbage collection but this time there would be points on segregation, which is one step ahead of the early survey's indicators. Also, last time there were points on the collection of garbage from various points but this time the focus of the survey will be how to process the collected garbage and further make it compost. So, if we move ahead with last year's strategy, then it's not going to help us at all. Also, there is negative marking this time on every service. If some municipal corporation claims that some work has been done and it provides documents and if the evaluators find that the municipal corporation has made false claims while verifying the documents, then there would be negative marking of the corporation concerned. In the last survey, there was no negative marking system," said the source.
Some of the new parameters included in the 2018 survey are assessment of availability of water connections to toilets, recovery of operation and maintenance costs of community and public toilets, advertisement revenue, municipal taxes and liquid waste management though treatment.
