The New Indian Express 18.05.2010
City ranks lowly 88 in cleanliness
HYDERABAD: The tall claims of the State Government and the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) of Hyderabad being among the cleanest of cities have been laid bare. A survey by the National Urban Sanitation Policy (NUSP) has ranked the city at a lowly 88, lower than Kukatpally municipality at 77, among 423 Indian cities. The NUSP rating was announced by the Ministry of Urban Development a few days ago.
The first of its kind survey of sanitation and cleanliness is the ministry’s first step towards achieving its ambitious agenda of `100 percent sanitation’ in major Indian cities.
The study, which covered cities with a population of more than 1 lakh, has thrown up a few surprises. Smaller cities like Chandigarh, Mysore, Mangalore, Jamshedpur and Surat took the top positions, overtaking bigger cities like Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru, which boast of massive resources and better urban infrastructure.
Reacting to the rating, Mayor Banda Karthika Reddy told expresso that steps would be taken to improve cleanliness in Hyderabad by tightening the monitoring of the sanitation wings and also involving residential welfare associations and NGOs.
“Hyderabad in 88th position is very unfortunate and has given a jolt to the image of the city. The corporation will do an introspection and take remedial measures. The NUSP study was done before the municipal elections. Local corporators will be involved to make the city a better to live in terms of sanitation and cleanliness,” the Mayor said.
Free from open defecation, universal access to toilets, treatment of waste, public health and environmental well-being, elimination of manual scavenging, adequate provision of personnel protection equipment that addresses safety of sanitation workers, safe collection, treatment and disposal of all waste water, storm water and recycle/reuse of treated waste water with the ultimate objective of ensuring improved public health outcomes and environmental well-being were the criteria on which the cities were assessed.
NUSP was part of the exercise started last year by the Centre to create awareness about sanitation. The rating covers all major cities and almost 72 percent of India’s total urban population. It was done by three agencies - AC Nielsen-ORG Marg, Development and Research Services (DRS) and the Centre for Environment Planning Technology (CEPT) University. Data was collected between December 2009 and March 2010 and scrutinised by experts in April.
