‘Do not compare city with Indore’

AURANGABAD: The civic body — facing sharp criticism from various sections of the society for it poor performance in the recently national level survey held under

Swatch Bharat Mission

— on Saturday said that people should not draw parallels between

Aurangabad

and Indore that emerged on top.

The city dropped to 299th position on the list of 434 cities.

Municipal commissioner

D M Mugalikar said there is huge disparity in the number of sanitary workers and other facilities available in the two cities.

“We are managing the system here in the city with a small team of about 1,650 sanitary workers while in Indore a team of 7,000 sanitary workers has been deployed for

solid waste management

. Similar disparity exists between the two cities with regard to other necessary infrastructure facilities,” he said.

Though the civic chief admitted that the civic body’s solid waste management system lacks manpower and other infrastructure, he also exuded confidence that the city would soon witness cleanliness everywhere.

“We have been introducing various steps and motivating private agencies to contribute in making the city clean. It will certainly show good results in coming days,” he said, adding that the civic body will soon increase number of sanitary workers through self-help groups (SHGs).

Besides, a fleet of 50 autorickshaws will soon be added to the civic body’s existing lot of vehicles deployed for garbage handling. Arrival of the new autorickshaws will take the total number of such vehicles in the civic body to 150. This will make significant improvement in solid waste management system.

The civic body has procured the auto rickshaws in two lots. In the first lot, it added 50 auto rickshaws in November 2016 while the second lot is about to come.

“As soon as we get the vehicles, we will distribute it among nine zones. Availability of new autorickshaws will speed up garbage disposal in many parts of the city and facilitate segregation of dry and wet waste,” he said.

In 2016, the

Aurangabad Municipal Corporation

(

AMC

) bought 50 autorickshaws after guardian minister Ramdas Kadam offered special funds to it through district planning and development committee (DPDC).

Mugalikar also said that decentralisation of the garbage disposal and the proposed move of creation of small garbage processing units at ward levels would make significant progress in the system.