VIJAYAWADA: The much-awaited visit of the team of Quality Council of India (QCI), which assesses the Swachh Survekshan-2018 for finalising the ranks are likely to conduct a three-day survey in the city during the first week of February. The delegation will visit Guntur for the similar purpose on January 24.
The upcoming QCI’s visit has the civic authorities of Vijayawada and Guntur running from pillar to post to make it to the top of the Swachh rankings to be announced by the Union Ministry for Housing and Urban Affairs. The survey is being carried out in nearly 4,000 cities across the country in order to assess cleanliness.
Earlier, in the Swachh Survekshan Survey-2017 Vijayawada secured 19th rank and Guntur 118th position. As part of their visit, a three-member team from QCI will conduct field visits to developed, underdeveloped, organised and unorganised slums in the city to take note of garbage collection and disposal mechanism and also to residential colonies, public toilets, community toilets, bus stands, vegetable markets and others to study cleanliness.
According to VMC officials, under the Swachh Survekshan Survey-2018 the ranking would be done based on three aspects: infrastructure in the city for garbage collection, scientific methods used to collect waste, direct observation by visiting public spaces in the city and feedback of the residents. The Central team will accord ranks to the cities based on 71 sanitation related parameters with different weightages for a total of 4,000 marks.
‘’As part of the survey, a Central team from New Delhi will come to Vijayawada to assess cleanliness of the city. The team will pay more attention to public participation and will interact with citizens to get their opinion and feedback on source segregation and open defecation’’, said VMC Commissioner J Nivas. Hence people also have great responsibility to help the city in achieving top ranking as the Central team will consider public participation an important criteria in the ranking for which one-third of the total marks has been allotted, he said. Soon after completion of their survey, the Central team will upload photos and videos of the locations on the spot to their Central office in Delhi through Geo tagging procedure, he added.