With the next round of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan to start in January, the Mysuru City Corporation (MCC) got its act together to regain the cleanest city tag and conducted a review meeting with the campaign brand ambassadors on Sunday.
The focus of the meeting was to ensure greater public participation in eliciting feedback, besides encouraging them to be proactive in drawing the MCC’s attention to uncleared garbage in their vicinity.
The meeting was attended by Pramoda Devi Wadiyar, former cricketer Javagal Srinath, yoga exponent and record holder Khushi, the former MLC, D. Made Gowda, representative of Sri Ramakrishna Ashram, besides Mayor M.J. Ravi Kumar and MCC Commissioner G. Jagadeesha and others.
The Mayor said people will be encouraged to download and use the Swachhata App— the official mobile app of the Union Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) – through which they can upload a picture and submit complaints and expect resolution of their grievances within 12 hours in case of garbage dumping. Health Officer D.G. Nagaraju said as against 20,000 downloads, about 1,000 were active. The meeting resolved to get school students involved in greater number to drum up publicity for the cleanliness drive. The competition is tougher this year as more than 4,000 towns and cities are being assessed in the 2018 campaign as against 474 cities and towns last year. However, the officials expressed confidence of reclaiming the top position as small towns and cities would have their own problems of lack of solid waste management plants or land fills to dispose off the waste and thus the advantages would get neutralised.
