The municipal corporation is girding up its loins to participate in another edition of Swachh Survekshan hoping of a better rank for the state capital that occupied the 946th place on the Centre’s cleanliness scale on Tuesday.

However, what could wash out the efforts of the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation is that the civic body has failed to generate enough citizen support for the mission.The guideline of the national level cleanliness mission suggests ensuring greater citizen participation in the mission that could simultaneously get good marks for the city as well as better rank.

However, the city’s performance has been poor on this count, the Centre’s Swachh City Dashboard has revealed.

According to the dashboard, the city has a population of about 8.4 lakh of which only 2,625 persons have registered or downloaded the Swachhata app. The citizen participation is judged on the number of registrations made on the Swachhata app.

“The city has slipped severely on account of solid waste management and specifically the construction and demolition of waste. There are neither enough numbers of waste bins, nor any effort to lift the construction waste regularly. It is contributing to pollution,” said Patia resident Subhadra Sarangi.

The national level dashboard, which also provides a daily rank to competing cities based on their performance, has put Bhubaneswar at 946th rank on Tuesday. There are nearly 5,000 cities and towns that have been ranked on the dashboard. What could worry the civic body more here is that citizens are not providing any feedback.

“The city was performing well a few years back in terms of cleanliness, but it is not the same now. I hope the officials would realise the falling standards and take measures to give the city a clean look. We will definitely participate if the civic body lives up to our expectation,” said Chinmay Muduli, a Kharavela Nagar resident. Mayor Ananta Narayan Jena said that they were making efforts to maintain the city’s cleanliness.

“We have put up two mechanical sweeping machines for cleaning the roads. We are also going to install waste bins across the city. I urge the people to help us do our job,” said Jena.

Blood donation

Police conducted a blood donation camp in Bhubaneswar on Tuesday. About 163 units of blood was collected in the camp. This was the 100th blood donation camp by the police under 'Jeevan Alok' campaign launched from January 1 this year.