Bhubaneswar, Nov. 11: Councillors will have an added responsibility as they have been tasked to certify that their wards have been cleaned properly.

At its monthly council meeting on October 29, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation decided that the councillors would henceforth issue cleanliness certificates to sanitary workers every week. However, the date from which the drive will begin has not been decided yet.

Sources said the move would help ensure better cleanliness across the city.

The councillors head the ward-level sanitation committees that have as its members, beat and ward officers and representatives of resident welfare associations.

“A decision has been taken in this regard, and it will come into effect shortly,” said public relations officer of the civic body Srimant Mishra.

Sources said that though three private agencies and the corporation have been carrying out garbage-cleaning in the 67 wards, residents have been complaining about the poor quality of work and occasionally also about the lack of cleaning in their areas.

The residents have been lodging their complaints through the toll-free Sanjog helpline, sanitation complain numbers and the civic body’s Sampark helpline that was launched last month as part of the Swachha Bhubaneswar Abhijan.

In the recent meeting, several councillors raised this issue following which it was decided that the councillors would certify in every week. At present, the councillors are certifying at the end of the month when the billing is done. Taking advantage of this, sanitation workers at the ground level used to clean the garbage during the last one or two weeks.

“Since we will have to certify every week about the cleanliness activities in our respective wards, we will make sure the sanitation workers do their job properly. Earlier, they were not listening to directions given to them and cleaning garbage only at the end of the month. This new system will ensure a cleaner environment in every locality,” said Amaresh Jena, councillor of ward No. 45.

Earlier, the corporation had inducted an IT firm from Hyderabad to conduct real time garbage disposal monitoring to check garbage cleaning in the city. Accordingly, the firm had deployed its employees, who took pictures of garbage bins and employees before and after the cleaning activities. This was done twice a day. Later, these photos were uploaded on the corporation website. Despite the real time monitoring, sanitation employees managed to cheat the officials. Later, the corporation terminated the service of the firm that had been contracted for two years from August 2012 to July 2014 at a cost of Rs 1.6 crore.

Sources in the civic body said the officials were thinking about restarting the real time garbage disposal monitoring, which would work along with the councillors’ issuing cleanliness certificates.