The Coimbatore Corporation went to town advertising Swachh Bharat Mission programmes when an inspection team was in the city to assess its performance.
It had displayed hoarding across the city, spruced up public toilets and also reached out to colleges to encourage students to download the Swachhata mobile app.
The corporation said that more than 20,000 students had downloaded the app.
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It did so because the app download was a parameter for ranking the city in the Swachh Bharat list of clean cities.
But after the team’s departure, the corporation appears to have lost steam in popularising the citizens’ feedback number.
A recent update on the citizens’ feedback index suggests that only 6,104 city residents have registered their feedback.
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Toll free number
By dialling the toll-free 1800 111 969, residents can express their willingness to participate in a survey of the city.
They will, in turn, get a call - an interactive voice response system - where in a language of their choice they can register their feedback on the corporation’s efficiency in cleaning the city.
Survey
Sources say that when the Swachhata app download alone has crossed 20,000 it is disheartening to note that only 6,104 of the near 20 lakh people in the city have participated in the survey.
Vishakapatnam ranks number one with 27,514 citizen responses. The city has a population of 20.91 lakh, the same as Coimbatore. Ranking 10th, four places below Coimbatore, is Faridabad. With just 17.89 people, the city has scored with 5,087 responses.
Corporation sources say that one of the reasons for the reluctance in popularising the number is the fear of negative feedback on account of water crisis.
The residents, in all possibility, will express their anger on the poor water supply by giving a negative feedback.
But, for the corporation the citizens’ feedback is important because it will help the city gain 400 marks in the over-all Swachh Bharat rankings.