With just a month left for Swachh Survekshan 2018 — meant to rank municipal corporations on their efforts to bring about cleanliness in their respective areas — all the three corporations of Delhi are in a scramble to get things moving.
The three civic bodies — North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC), South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) and East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) — have separately and jointly launched awareness programmes on a variety of sanitation issues, especially garbage management.
However, RWAs alleged that these awareness programmes remained just lip service. “Awareness programmes are to be conducted involving the people of the city. The RWAs are to be taken into confidence to ensure greater public participation — but that hardly happened. I don’t know if RWAs of South Delhi or North Delhi were involved during the awareness programmes, but EDMC certainly did not involve the RWAs,” complained BS Vohra, president of RWA Federation of East Delhi. Delhi News
South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC), leapfrogging the efforts of north and east zones, has launched Swachhata Sandesh Vans to read out recorded messages of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in areas under its jurisdiction.
“Three vans were launched around two months back. The recorded messages are exhorting citizens to contribute their bit in making their colonies and roads clean,” said SDMC spokesperson Mukesh Yadav.
Besides such individual efforts, all three civic bodies of the city have jointly launched ‘Mobile Swachhata App 311’ — SDMC 311, EDMC 311, NDMC 311. The app will help users to locate public toilets, police stations, metro stations, petrol pumps, parking areas, hospitals, bus shelters, veterinary, market places.
The app can also be used to report civic issues, such as waterlogged streets, unattended garbage dumps, non-functioning toilet complexes. Users can lodge a complaint and upload geo-tagged photos. Once that happens, a designated officer in that locality resolves the complaint.
This app was inaugurated by Delhi Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal in the last week of January.
In last year’s Swachhata Survekshan, of the 434 cities surveyed, EDMC figured at 196, SDMC at 202 and NDMC at 279.
The Swachh Survekshan, introduced by Union Urban Development Ministry, is meant to keep track of the progress made by municipal corporations in terms of cleanliness in the city.
