Surat: A quality control India (QCI) team from Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) will check, verify and validate Surat’s status as an open defecation free+ (ODF+) city next week. The team will also decide on city’s claim for three star rating out of seven during its visit.Dr Ashish Naik, deputy commissioner of health, told TOI, “We achieved ODF free status last year. We had sent in our application for upgradation to ODF+ status. The QCI team will also check and validate our application for three star rating.”MoUD has been classifying cities depending upon infrastructure and facilities for public use. For a city to get ODF+ status, 10 per cent of its public toilets need to be self-sustained and should have vending machines, hand driers, floodlights and stable infrastructure.Some 160 public toilets will be taken into account in Surat and at present over 67 have the required facilities. “In addition to the required facilities, these 67 toilets also have public feedback systems. Another 50 will be equipped with the public feedback systems and other facilities next week.” Dr Naik said.For a city to achieve three start status, it has to have 100 door-to-door garbage collection system, bulk waste disposal system, system to process at least 50 per cent of its waste collected, its streets and roads must be cleaned twice a day, dustbins must be placed at 100 metre distance in commercial areas, must levy user charges on citizens, also water bodies must be free of garbage among other things.“We qualify on all these parameters and hope to get the three star status soon,” Dr Naik added.Surat’s population is over 50 lakh and it produces 1,800 MT of waste daily.

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