The new rankings for the Swachh Survekshan survey, which ranks Indian cities in order of cleanliness, has ranked Vadodara on number 79 on a national level out of 425 cities.
The survey, an initiative under Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban) by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, to rank cities as per their sanitation standards, has awarded 79th rank to Vadodara and statewide it has awarded Vadodara the 6th rank.
This is a step down for the city which had stood on the 44th rank in the previous year’s survey of 471 urban local bodies. It had further slipped from 2017 ranking of number 10 and was ranked 13 in 2016.
According to Municipal Commissioner, Ajay Badoo remarked that Vadodara lost out on the ranking because of the documentation part. Since the VMC failed to upload some documentation, in SLP Documentation Vadodara missed out on marks since it scored a total of 406 marks out of 1250 but the aggregate score of most cities has been 800 plus.
Vadodara also lost out the score for direct observation, where it scored 975 marks while major cities scored an average of 1100+ plus.
But Ajay Badoo remarked how they had done well in the citizen feedback part. “We had done the best in Gujarat in the Citizen feedback and app parameters where we scored 1019 marks.”
Kashyap Shah, of Solid Waste Management, echoed the same sentiment. “There is a lack in the documentation done by them.”
VMC has diligently worked hard to bring about a visible change in the level of cleanliness in Vadodara. Other than spreading awareness and providing Barodians with different dustbins for wet waste and e-waste segregation, they have been fining citizens for littering.
