HYDERABAD: A day after the release of the Swachh Survekshan ranking, which concluded that the Secunderabad Cantonment Board (SCB) was the worst cantonment among all 62 cantonments in the country in terms of cleanliness, the SCB’s Sanitation Department has come out rejecting the Central government report. The SCB officials have also blamed the fund crunch for their failure to resolve the cleanliness issues.
Speaking to Express, Mahender Akula, an official from the SCB’s Sanitation Department, said that the survey was incorrect and called it biased and unfair.
“Despite the SCB being one of the largest cantonments in the country, the Sanitation Department is leaving no stones unturned to maintain cleanliness in the area,” he said. “The survey is based on many things, including documentation. There were some issues from the department in submitting the documents on time. This could have affected the ranking,” he added.
The ranking, which was released on December 31 by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) last two quarters, gave the ranking based on 2,000 marks.
The SCB secured 136.83 marks in the first quarter and 10.61 marks in the second quarter, thereby ending in the last spot in both quarters.
“The SCB officials recently did take up the Swachh Bharath programme, however, it was only for the officials’ publicity as no groundwork was done. These officials should be held accountable and if they can’t do their duties properly, then they should hand over their resignation,” said T Arun Joyti, from ward 5. Meanwhile, SCB vice president J Ramakrishna passed the buck to the Central government for the SCB’s poor ranking.
“Time and again, we have been requesting the Centre to clear off our pending dues so that we can do the development work, however, we are not been given any help. A pending amount of `550 crores is pending due to which we are not able to repair our roads or pay our contractors. How do they expect us to take up the development work?” he said.