TRICHY: To verify the city’s claim on public sanitation and solid waste management (SWM) practices, a survey agency deputed by the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) has scheduled a visit between February 26 and 28. The agency members, as two teams, are likely to camp in the city for three days to verify documentation and subsequently field trips till the month end.The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), in August of 2017, had launched a timeline for preparing, participating and evaluating Swachh Survekshan 2018, a survey to identify clean cities of the nation. The number of participating cities also increased from 434 in 2017 survey to 500 (cities with population of 1 lakh and above).Similarly, a slew of changes were made in the parameters including negative marks for dubious claims by a civic body over cleanliness. As the city corporation has been working for the D-day since August 2017, and a majority of the preparatory works completed, SBM on its official portal (www.swachhsurvekshan2018.com) has announced that Trichy Corporation will undergo two stages of assessment between February 26 and 28.Initially, the survey agency will be reviewing the documentation made by the civic body detailing about implementation of cleanliness and sanitation projects in the last year. Later, another team from the survey agency will assess cleanliness in slum areas, planned colonies, commercial localities, religious places, community toilets and public spaces.“Almost 90 per cent of documentation works have been completed, in the next few days we will conclude the remaining paper works. The city is well prepared for the Swachh assessment. We are confident about improving our rank in the cleanliness survey,” corporation commissioner N Ravichandran told TOI. The civic body in last year’s survey secured sixth place in cleanliness and sanitation index across the nation.Unlike previous years, it is to be noted that component weightage for municipal documentation in 2018 Swachh Survekshan has been brought down to 35 per cent from 45 pe rcent. Whereas, the component weightage for direct observation has been increased from 25 per cent to 30 and the weightage for citizen feedback has been increased from 30 to 35 percent.For the first time, negative marks in respect of all 71 parameters in Swachh score has been introduced this year. If the claims by the civic bodies were found incorrect during independent observations, the civic body concerned would get negative marks.

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