Mysuru: The twice cleanest city in the country Mysuru, whose position dropped to fifth in the current years survey is gearing up in full swing to retain its slightly diminished glory. The corporation authorities led by the mayor have decided to set up a Project Management Unit, an exclusive body to look into Swachh Bharath Mission and started functioning from May 5 itself.
Addressing media persons at the Corporation auditorium here on Friday, Mayor M J Ravi Kumar who was disappointed with the outcome of the survey said, “When we received a call from Delhi inviting us to take part in the award presentation ceremony, we thought Mysuru city retained cleanest city tag for the third consecutive year. Infact, I went to the award ceremony to receive the topper award but surprisingly when they announced, we were found in the fifth place. I even tried to ask Venkaiah Naidu what exactly was the reason. During the interaction, he himself told me that Mysuru still is the cleanest city.
Last year, we competed with 73 cities while this year we competed with 434 cities. Going by the number of cities, though we are not officially the cleanest city in the country, but still I feel still we are. Except in terms of public opinion and individual toilets, we did well in the rest of the parameters. In days to come, we will try to chalk out strategies to do well in those segments. Though we created many awareness programmes, most of the time we had server problems from Swatch Bharath operators for reasons best known to them. I think there is politics behind it. If the previous commissioner, soon after receiving the award last year had taken initiative to invite tender for individual toilets we would have scored better marks. For documentation and spot visit we have secured 93 and 92 percent respectively”, said Ravi.
Corporation Commissioner Jagadeesh who also spoke on the occasion said, “If left like this, we may slip to 55th place next year. Hence I have decided to start work from today itself. An exclusive body called ‘Project Management Unit’ is set up to look into Swachh Bharath Mission related programmes. To look into the unit, an engineer and other related officials will also be appointed. As per DPR, we will also be appointing 500 more pourakarmikas”.
