Bhubaneswar: The municipal corporation is strengthening its online services with focus on sanitation.

Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation has decided to open a separate Swachh Bhubaneswar website where citizens can air their grievances easily, which will facilitate the civic body officials to act on time to resolve the issues.

The website will also act as a monitoring portal for cleanliness in the city.

"We have been rigorously working to streamline things when it comes to sanitation. We have opened more public and community toilets and also constructing household latrines in the city. However, there is a need of a proper monitoring system for which the new website will prove beneficial," said mayor Ananta Narayan Jena.

The upcoming website will have separate sections for toilet - public, community and household, waste bin management, sweeping activities, number of sanitation workers deployed in the field along with the contact numbers of their heads, complaint portal along with a system to know the status of the complaints and more. "The civic body already has a mobile application called My City My Pride. I have lodged complaints there regarding defunct street lights, overflowing drains and more, but rarely do I see that my complaint was heard or resolved immediately. I hope they are able to function better with the website," said Goutam Nagar resident Jajati Mohapatra.

Besides the online portal on cleanliness, the corporation is also planning to introduce the online holding tax collection service to all of its wards. It is now confined to only four municipal wards. The recently started registration process for the resident welfare associations will go online within a week.

Citizen welfare schemes such as Madhu Babu Pension Yojna and Harischandra Yojna will also be digitised as part of the current efforts. Details of the beneficiaries and the financial assistance extended to them will be updated online to avoid any discrepancy in the system.

Earlier last week, municipal commissioner Krishan Kumar headed a meeting on the online services where these decisions were taken.