HYDERABAD: In the clean city rankings released by Ministry of Urban Development on Thursday, Hyderabad is ranked 22 this year compared to a 19 last year.
However, the city has stood way ahead of all major metropolitan cities in the country. Nine out of 11 cities in Telangana have significantly improved their rankings from that of the survey conducted in 2014.
MA&UD minister KT Rama Rao responded to the results saying, “In Swachh Survekshan 2017 Rankings Hyderabad stood 1st among big metro cities viz., Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata & Pune.” Further, he said, “Last year we were 19 among 75 cities. Nevertheless, huge scope for improvement in all towns,” he added.
GHMC commissioner B Janardhan Reddy reasoned the performance to loss of valuable marks owing to delay in the implementation of Open Defecation Free (ODF) programme, improper documentation and not taking adequate feedback from citizens and not giving information properly to the independent observers.
If we had done well in these categories, city would have been in top 10 clean city rankings. Other cities started ODF two years back whereas GHMC took up the programme towards fag end of last year that costed us dearly, he added.
On the other hand, Mayor Bonthu Rammohan said that Hyderabad has done well in Swachh Sarvekshan-2017 as GHMC has taken several measures to improve sanitation all over the city by distributing 44 lakhs bins, swachh auto trolleys for transporting of garbage from house to house and other measures.