Even as the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs revised its guidelines for Swachh Survekshan 2018 (clean city ranking), Tiruchi City Corporation has geared up to meet them in order to improve its ranking.

Tiruchi secured sixth position among 434 cities in the 2017 ranking and third among 73 cities in 2016. It was adjudged the second cleanest city in the country when the Swachh Survekshan system was introduced for the first time in 2015.

However, in order to provide an opportunity to smaller cities, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has proposed to cover 4,041 towns in the 2018 survey that will be conducted in January-February.

While 500 cities with more than one lakh population and capitals of States and Union Territories will have all India ranking, 3,541 cities with less than one lakh population will have state and zonal rankings.

Citizen feedback

Corporation Commissioner-cum-Special Officer, Tiruchi, N. Ravichandran told The Hindu that as per the new guidelines, rankings would be based on 71 sanitation-related parameters with different weightage. Similarly, the cumulative marks had also gone up to 4,000 from 2,000. More weightage would be given to citizen feedback. There was also negative marking.

While Tiruchi city was a top performer in clean city ranking since 2015, there was a need to take several more steps to improve the ranking. The ranking methodology had become tougher this year. However, the city could improve its ranking by involving various stakeholders including citizens. It had started addressing each and every issue as per the revised guidelines, he added.

Officials from the Corporation and municipalities attended a workshop on collection and compilation of data here on Wednesday. The Commissioner said that 124 municipalities were maintaining a database. Officers in Madurai were sent to Coimbatore to get training in data compilation.