UP gets tips from Surat model for clean cities

* Generate awareness among the people. Ask them to cooperate and keep the city clean. For this,take help of school children and run awareness campaign in schools and colleges.

These were some of the measures,to ensure complete sanitation in the city,given by Additional Secretary of Union Ministry of Information Technology S R Rao to municipal officials and district magistrates of 14 cities in the state on Saturday.

Former municipal commissioner of Surat,Rao,has been credited with changing the plague-hit,rat-infested,unhygienic and disorganised Surat city into one that was declared as the second cleanest city in the country by INTACH in the late 1990s.

“As Rao had done in Surat years ago,I will be on the field with other staff members from 7 am to 12 pm from tomorrow onwards to supervise the sanitation work and motivate the safai karmacharis,” said Ashok Kumar,Municipal Commissioner of Allahabad.

Kumar said,“Rao was successful in cleaning Surat because he had gained the faith of the subordinate staff and the locals. As Rao suggested,we will attend the family function of the lower rank staff and interact with them every day to get their support.”

The Kanpur Nagar Nigam will involve NGOs and the locals to keep the city clean. “According to Rao,children are the best medium to educate the citizens about sanitation. We will run campaigns in schools and ask the children to keep their surroundings clean and communicate this message to their parents too,” said Rajiv Sharma,Municipal Commissioner of Kanpur. Similar awareness drive would be run in factories and among traders too.

“We are already cleaning the city from morning. But from Monday onwards,we will intensify the supervision work,” Sharma said.

Lucknow Municipal Commissioner S K Singh said: “We have already started cleaning the city. But we need to create awareness among the people of Lucknow about the measures to keep their surroundings clean.”

According to sources,Rao highlighted the importance of reorganisation of staff members. “Rao said deployment of staff should be done according to the population demand,” said an official.

Rao said he had effectively introduced an arrangement,whereby all the senior officials along with safai karmacharis were on the fields from 7 am to 1 pm every day and he had generated good will among the subordinate staff by attending their family functions and clearing their pension dues on time.

“Rao suggested that the municipal commissioner should delegate his power among other officials so that he himself could focus on cleanliness,planning and development of the city,” said an official.

The presentation was attended by municipal officials and district magistrates of 14 cities — Lucknow,Kanpur,Allahabad,Varanasi,Agra,Moradabad,Meerut,Ghaziabad,Bareilly,Aligarh,Gorakhpur,Jhansi,Saharanpur and Noida.

After the presentation,the state government directed the officials to create awareness among school children about the role of the public towards the cleanliness of the city and involve the trader organisation and local welfare societies in keeping the city clean.