Swachh Survekshan needs to conduct survey properly: Pawar

Shimla has achieved almost 100 per cent door-to-door garbage collection, said the deputy mayor.

Shimla, May 5: Deputy Mayor of Shimla Municipal Corporation, Tikendra Singh Pawar on Friday said the data of 'Swachh Survekshan-2017 (cleanliness survey)' needs to be comprehended properly.

"Shimla has performed phenomenally well and secured 47th rank out of 500 cities, but the matrix drawn for such a survey is faulty and did not help the mountain cities. "In fact Shimla ranked first among cities with population of two lakh to 10 lakh and happens to be in the fourth position in the entire northern region," he said.

Pointing out that the cost of infrastructure development was almost four times in the hills as compared to plains posed a different challenge, Pawar said. In Shimla, just 25 per cent houses are connected through roads and the general policy direction is not to have motorable roads everywhere owing to reasons like increasing vulnerability of landslides, making the mountains more susceptible to climate change, he said, adding that the matrix must consider this important impediment.

Further, in such a situation it is difficult to sustain door-to-door garbage collection for solid waste management as the vehicle would not reach every house warranting deployment of larger number of people, Pawar said.

Although, Shimla cannot match cities like Chandigarh but it has achieved almost 100 per cent door-to-door garbage collection, he said. Similarly, the survey deals with toilets and there prevailing conditions but the fact is that the toilets are constructed in the town where water supply is given on alternate days different norms are required for towns like Shimla, he stressed.

The Urban Development Ministry had commissioned the survey for 500 cities and towns with population of 1 lakh and above in January and February this year. The results, however, were available for 434 cities and towns which were announced on Wednesday.

On May 4, the Ministry of Urban Development had released the results of top cleanest and dirtiest cities in the country. The results of the City Sanitation Ranking Survey 'Swachh Survekshan-2017' was announced by the Union Ministry on May 4.

According to the survey, Indore has emerged as the cleanest city among all million plus and capital cities while Gonda in Uttar Pradesh has been ranked the worst.

The Ministry of Urban Development commissioned the survey in January 2017.

Here is the list of 5 clean cities:

• Indore and Bhopal of Madhya Pradesh
• Visakhapatnam of Andhra Pradesh
• Surat of Gujarat
• Mysuru of Karnataka
• Tiruchirappalli of Tamil Nadu

Swachh Bharat 2016 had ranked 73 cities across the country and Mysuru was ranked on top followed by Chandigarh.

OneIndia News ( With PTI inputs).