The Municipal Administration and Urban Development department has bagged eight SKOCH awards in various categories for innovative practices in bringing municipal services closer to citizens.
Director of Municipal Administration (DMA) will get the award for ‘Energy Efficiency through Smart Street Lighting’ and ‘e-Office’. The Mission for Elimination of Poverty in Municipal Areas, also supervised by the DMA, will be awarded for ‘Survey of Urban Homeless in 74 Urban Local Bodies of Telangana State’. The second award is for providing employment through skills training.
Six ULBs will also receive awards in the following categories — Miryalaguda: Urban reforms in AMRUT scheme; Karimnagar: Improving liveability and open gyms, smart governance through citizen service and project LED; Shadnagar: Garbage source segregation and property tax collection; Siddipet: Sustainable city by use of technology – city livelihood centre, sustainable AMRUT city, environment and sustainability, sustainable e-governance, sustainable clean city, sustainable governance–use of technology; Boduppal: Innovation on solid waste management, e-governance; Sircilla: Citizen service centre and citizen buddy, LED streetlights, innovative aspects in solid waste management and sustainable waste disposal.
Skoch Awards celebrate human excellence and the agents of change in society for spearheading positive socio-economic changes, salutary transformations in society and governance by displaying exemplary leadership abilities. They are the highest independently instituted civilian honours in India since 2003 and are awarded for best practices in India in the fields of governance, finance, banking, technology, corporate citizenship, economics and inclusive growth.
Last year, the DMA got Skoch Awards under smart governance category for - Online citizen services’, satellite mapping of properties and GIS based property tax collection survey.
