Bhubaneswar: Swachhata app, the smartphone application developed to get feedback from people on the city's cleanliness aspect, reveals that the civic body continues to disappoint citizens.

Bhubaneswar continued to perform badly on the Centre's Swachh City platform with its daily rank hovering between 185 and 190.

On Wednesday, the city stands occupies the 185th position. However, smaller town such as Sambalpur continues to give a tough fight to Bhubaneswar and stands at 180 on Wednesday.

The reason for the city's under-performance is believed to be the administration's inability to get adequate app users. The situation is worrisome since the users are also not satisfied with the city's cleanliness aspects.

So far, the city has got only 817 app users, of whom only 281 are active users. Only 54 users have registered their feedbacks on the app and 29 of these have given negative markings on the city's cleanliness aspect.

The dissatisfaction among the users triggered a fear for Bhubaneswar getting a low rank in the ongoing Swachh Survekshan since the feedback of citizens constitute a major chunk of the marks required to get a good rank. Bhubaneswar is competing with 4,000 other cities in this nationwide survey.

The city had stood 24th among 73 cities in Swachh Survekshan I, while it ranked 93rd among 500 cities in Swachh Survekshan II.

"The city is not improving its the cleanliness parameters. They are still irregular in lifting garbage and clearing overflowing bins. Instead of asking for votes, they should focus on the cleanliness," said Patia resident Gopal Hota.

To get more people on the app, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation has flagged off a van that moves around the city and spreads awareness about the ongoing cleanliness survey. Besides, it is also conducting citizen-connect programmes at various educational institutions. The civic body has also taken it up on social media websites to generate awareness.

"We did intensify the cleanliness activities over the time. We are conducting twice a day sweeping of major roads and market areas. Sanitation agencies are also lifting wastes from collection points on time. We are trying to get more citizen feedback and resolve their issues. We urge them to take part in the survey and help us help them in maintaining the cleanliness," said mayor Ananta Narayan Jena.