VISAKHAPATNAM: The city has risen to the top spot in the country in the ‘Citizen Feedback’ component of Swachh Survekshan-2018 by getting well over 1 lakh responses from locals till Wednesday.The Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation ( GVMC ) is optimistic that Vizag will hold on to the first place in this segment as South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC), which was in first place till two weeks ago, was relegated to the second position by Vizag by a slender margin of over 3,000 responses from residents.While SDMC secured only about 4,000 responses in the last two weeks, Vizag performed tremendously by garnering about 47,000 responses during the same period.Several major cities of the country are trailing Vizag by a huge margin, such as Indore (67,550 responses), Bhopal (47,328), Tiruchirapalli (57,919), and Jaipur (34,113). Metro cities such as Greater Mumbai (14,637), Chennai (9,007), Kolkata (775) and Bangalore (2,441) were nowhere near the top.The Swachh Survekshan 2018 dedicates 1,400 marks (or 35% weightage) to citizens’ feedback out of the total 4,000 marks, making it a crucial part of the survey. The efforts of the civic body as well as the ‘Love Vizag’ campaign taken up by the residents of the city propelled the city in terms of number of responses.The love among Vizagites for their city was apparent last year too with the city bagging third rank in the Swachh Survekshan-2017. eIt was Vizagites’ love for their city which earned the ‘3rd cleanest city of the country’ in Swachh Survkeshan 2017. Well over a lakh residents submitted feedback for the Swachh survey last year, making Vizag the city with the highest number of responses as the survey got only 37 lakh resposes from all 434 cities of the country.GVMC commissioner M Hari Narayanan explained how the public can submit their feedback through various ways. “Besides Swachh Survekshan and Swachhata app, residents can submit their feedback on the toll-free number #1969. More than 1 lakh Vizagites have participated in the 2017 survey and this time we are hoping for feedback from about 2 lakh residents,” he said.Centurion University vice-chancellor and Swachh Visakha Brand Ambassador Prof GSN Raju is hopeful of Vizag city getting first rank in SS 2018.“It has been a 360-degree transformation of Vizag city from the 205th rank in the 2015 survey to 5th rank in the 2016 survey to 3rd rank in 2017 survey. As feedback plays a key role in the survey, we visited several colleges and public places and requested the public to participate in the survey. This fetched fairly good results. March 10 is the last date to submit citizen feedback,” said Prof GSN Raju.The number of responses garnered from Vizagites as of Wednesday is manifold compared to any other major city of Andhra Pradesh such as Vijayawada (42,369 responses), Tirupati (17,606), Rajahmundry (16,014) and Kakinada (10,106).GVMC has planned to send a total of 15 lakh bulk SMSes in a phased manner, requesting residents of the city to participate in the survey. From creating videos and setting up hoardings across the city on Swachh Bharat Mission , Swachh Survekshan, and citizen feedback components, the civic body is leaving no stone unturned towards achieving first rank in this year’s survey.

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