With the city being declared as the “India’s Cleanest Big City” in the Swachh Survekshan 2018 (SS2018) awards, the civic body and the administrators on Thursday received appreciation from all quarters.
Mayor Koneru Sreedhar, Municipal Commissioner J. Nivas, municipal council members celebrated the success by cutting a cake at the municipal council meeting.
Calling it as a result of teamwork, Mr. Nivas said proper training of the ground-level sanitation workers, engineering staff and the active participation of citizens in providing feedback to the survey helped bag fourth place under cities with more than one million population.
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He said with a proper strategy that began in September last year, focus on segregation of garbage at households and processing the same on a daily basis had been effectively increased.
Apart from maintaining the roads clean, biomining of the abandoned dumping yard at Ajith Singh Nagar, modernised toilets and others helped the city have a better score and stand top in the State.
The city corporators, who praised Mr. Nivas and Mr. Sreedhar for the achievement, also reminded them of the sanitation problems like underground drainage, open drains, internal roads and others.
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Mr. Sreedhar and corporators of both the Opposition and the ruling parties said the work being done by the sanitation wing was commendable. The corporators said more workers were needed. MLC B. Nageswara Rao proposed increase in the salaries of the workers.
On the other hand, sanitation at bordering areas and maintenance of the three canals passing through the city has become a tough task for the civic body. Though it recently launched a special campaign with 500 workers, many parts of the canals still remain clogged with plastic waste.
The survey result is decided based on the final score, the result of a four-part evaluation.
In all, 63,983 responses were received by the Swachh Survekshan.