Coimbatore: For the fourth consecutive year, the cotton city has failed to find a place in top three positions in Swachh Survekshan 2018 rankings. The ministry of housing and urban affairs declared Indore, Bhopal and Chandigarh as cleanest cities in the country under the Swachh Survekshan 2018 rankings on Wednesday.
Lesser developed cities with poor infrastructure and revenue have managed to find a place in the survey, but Coimbatore has not. Corporation officials said though the city is clean on the ground, much of the reason for poor ranking was tougher competition and need for better documentation process. Lack of political will in the state to implement solid waste management scheme in a much better manner is also a reason, say experts.
A corporation officer said, “If you see most of the cities that have been featured in the list are from the BJP-ruled states. Most of these cities have been working with a focus on the survey since the day Swachh scheme was announced by the Prime Minister. But, in Tamil Nadu we have to work simultaneously on multiple projects.’’
In the first year in 2014, Coimbatore and none of the cities in Tamil Nadu worked with the objective of getting the ranks. However, he pointed out that Coimbatore had improved from 196th place in 2015 to 18th in 2017. The number of cities involved in this competition also made it tougher to find a top place. In 2015, only 73 cities were selected for the survekshan. In 2016, the number was increased to 434 and now in 2017, 4,203 cities were selected for the survekshan.
This year, even the way the cities were assessed was changed. The ministry had assessed the progress made from January 2017 till December 2017 under Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban (SBM-U).
The data was collected and segregated into 3 main areas - municipal documentation and interactions with municipal body, collection of data from direct observation and collection of data from citizen feedback.
“Initially, when we met the officials, they were not happy with the way we had documented the entire solid waste management process. They asked us to make a lot of changes and change the way in which we had presented the data. That perception could also have been a factor in these rankings,” said a volunteer from an NGO involved in the process.
But the residents said they were extremely disappointed. “More than 1,000 volunteers from various colleges, NGOs and residential welfare associations worked for this for over a year. “We are disappointed, but we are sure, we have improved from previous years,” said M A Aparna of Arc Foundation.
At the same time, Indore that came number one was ranked 25 in 2016 improved and came number one in 2017 and 2018 as well. “They distributed dust bins to every household and spent a lot of funds on improving door-to-door waste collection,” said a private consultant. “Even states such as Kerala and Odisha did not feature because their state governments also do not stress on this,’’ a corporation official said.