After obtaining ‘three star’ ranking under the ‘Garbage-free city’ category, the temple city of Tirupati is coveting five star’ for next year.
The city was given the ranking by the Union Government’s Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs based on assessment of its door-to-door collection of garbage, segregation into wet and dry waste, installation of litter bins, implementation of plastic ban, Open Defecation-free certification (ODF++), scientific landfill among other things, apart from undertaking a third party verification.
“We owe this achievement to the dedicated service of our health workers. It is also the people’s compliance that made it possible,” announced MLA Bhumana Karunakar Reddy and MCT Commissioner P.S. Girisha at a media conference here on Wednesday.
Mr. Girisha also referred to the glitches and deviations observed in certain wards that made the city slip the ‘5 star’ category it had applied for and vowed to overcome them this year. “Effective implementation of the plastic ban, user charges for garbage collection, ward-wise survey to identify gaps are the areas we would focus on this year,” Mr. Girisha added.
