The Secret Behind Visakhapatnam’s Ranking in Swachh Survekshan 2017

A leading daily from Bengaluru wrote a story yesterday about the secret behind Vizag’s ranking in Swachh Survekshan 2017. Curious as to what they claim to be the secret behind Vizag’s ranking on the Swachh Survekshan Survey

They claim the dustbins hanging from electric poles, at bus stops and all along the footpath not leaving enough scope for one to litter the roads. These dustbins automatically draw the attention of people passing by and they claim, everyone automatically does their part to drop the waste into the dustbins. (This is not at all true, like we wrote about here. Not to mention people treating tree-guards as dustbins, despite there being an actual dustbin in the vicinity.)

Furthermore, fifteen wards in the city are said to segregate dry and wet waste with the wet waste collected and converted into vermin compost at three plants. The same compost is used for trees and plants along the highways under the maintenance of Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation (GVMC).

Every pan shop in the city has been directed to have a bucket to collect waste, the bucket is supplied by GVMC for a price of Rs 400 each. The 3300 regular and double the number of contract and sanitary workers do their best to clean up the roads, working hard from 4 AM to noon. Apart from this, it is claimed, that the local youth participate in beach road cleaning on a regular basis. (Maybe the author has confused beach clean-up with cleaning the beach road?)

GVMC has reportedly identified 193 points where open defecation is rampant and posted Swachagrahi volunteers. These volunteers are also apparently at work from 4 AM onwards and when someone tried to defecate openly, they patiently escort the defecator to a nearby public toilet. (Wish they were there when this was happening). GVMC has renovated 80 abandoned public toilets, making them user-friendly and another 330 public toilets were built. The corporation has also reportedly managed to convince 12,000 families to build their own latrines with the assistance of the government under the Swachh Bharat Mission.

So there you go people, all these moves by the GVMC are the reason behind Vizag ranking third amongst 434 cities in India. Do you guys agree or do you think there are other reasons to be credited for the ranking? Is there anything that could’ve helped us get a better ranking?