“Swachh Bharat”

Background

Municipal Corporations in India are perceived as inefficient, bureaucratic and irresponsive organizations. It is very critical that these bodies transform themselves by deploying best in class processes, technology and customer service approach with the objective of delivering time bound results.
The 210,000+ strong “Swachh Bharat” online citizen community has come together to collectively identify the key issues, root causes and solutions for transforming Municipal Corporations in India. The citizen community would like to see the implementation of these solutions across the country at various Municipal Bodies.
Active participation of Municipal Corporations and their active engagement with Citizens at a very local level is critical to the sustained success of Swachh Bharat Mission. It is expected that every urban municipal body will get connected with its citizen community within the next one year and collectively work towards driving cleanliness to achieve this mission.

Current State/Issues, Root Causes and Solutions

Current State/Issues Identified:
1. Duty timings of municipal workers is not known
2. No list of municipal workers and their seniors is available to citizens
3. A lot of workers are on the rolls but never show up at work
4. Workers don't perform their assigned duty
5. Municipality workers do not come for cleaning on daily basis
6. Municipal workers are very rude
7. Garbage dumps are nor cleared regularly
8. Garbage collection vehicles have open tops which means that garbage keeps falling off them
9. Lack of grievance redressal mechanism
10. Lack of transparency in work - Self disclosure of information is rarely done
11. A lot of times important information is purposefully hidden from people
12. Road are dug up in many places and left as it is
13. There is lots of corruption within the Municipalities
14. Drainage system is not maintained well by the municipality and the water overflows on to the roads
15. Working of the Municipality is technologically backwards

Root Causes Identified:
1. Municipal employees have been used to the same old way of working for a long time
2. There is no biometric or systems based attendance in most corporations
3. The corporation is not computerized and still resorts to the old mechanism of working
4. Workers are lazy and try to shrug away from their responsibilities
5. There is no pressure of performance on the employees
6. Employees are never subjected to performance reviews
7. Field workers have a physically enduring job and most of the workers and not physically fit
8. Senior employees have a lot of authority, which they use in negative ways like asking for bribes
9. Workers are very sure about their job security and hence are not bothered about how they perform
10. They want to be felt important and hence don’t give out information till someone asks repeatedly
11. The drainage systems were designed decades back and are prone to breakdown
12. People who are supposed to keep the city clean stay in a filthy condition and have no knowledge of cleanliness themselves
13. There are workers who are dutiful but they are not allowed to work by the other majority
14. Intra department coordination is lacking
15. Workers don’t have the latest work/safety equipment and hence are not efficient in their work
16. The solutions delivered through PPP (Public Private Partnership) route are riddled with ill design, ill conceived, ill executed contracts which provides more opportunities for non-performance and corruption

Solutions identified:
1. Each of the public service should have an ESLA with defined fines for non-delivery
2. A 24 X 7 citizen response/call centre with a mobile app/internet interface is needed to enable citizens to file complaints, share pictures, etc.
3. Each ward should have a clear list of officials and phone numbers of health , sanitation , electrical , water supply indicated on website and prominent places
4. A technologically efficient grievance redressal mechanism should be developed
5. Delegation of duties should be taken seriously and the ward councillor should be made responsible for keeping the area clean
6. Municipal Ward Councillors should be asked to get and stay connected with citizens with a local circle for every ward
7. Time Bound Services needs to be implemented for all municipal services
8. Name and contact details of supervisors of each area should be available on the municipal website so that people could contact them directly
9. Staff should be given an idea of how a public work is done in other countries
10. Every employee who has a public facing role should be given customer service training
11. Employees should be trained so that they know the importance of staying clean and keeping the area clean
12. Workers should be identifiable through their uniform
13. The working of the department should be made transparent
14. Daily working of the municipality should be computerized
15. Better inter-department coordination should be ensured
16. Privatization of certain activities should be explored
17. Reporting structure should be cleaned up
18. Tasks should be made deadline driven
19. Meetings should be conducted regularly and discussions/feedback should be recorded
20. Attendance should be done through biometrics
21. Managers should be made responsible for tracking all the employees and making sure that they show up for work
22. Department heads should make sure that the KRA’s of each individuals are met with optimum efficiency
23. Honest employees should be felicitated
24. Corrupt officials should be caught, prosecuted and made an example of.
25. Promotions/appraisals should be linked to performance
26. Tenure of all CEOs should be fixed
27. Political (MP/MLA) appointments, influence and interference in Municipal Corporations needs to be eliminated
28. The drainage system should be redesigned
29. Municipal trucks should clean the dumps twice every day, without fail
30. Municipality should upgrade to the latest equipment and closed vehicles to pick up garbage
31. Garbage handling workers shall be provided nose masks, glove
32. The digging of the road should be completed in a stipulated time frame
33. Garbage pickup from designated points should be tracked through either GPS
34. Periodical interaction shall be done with them to understand their difficulties. Apart from officials the citizen committee shall be asked to interact with them to give appropriate direction to the municipality

Transforming Municipal Corporations – Few Citizen Posts and Comments:
1. The quality of people has to change. Most jobs are given out based not on merit but on you know what. Most Government department suffer because of that. Good Recruitment followed by training is the key – Ravi Menon

2. A 24 X 7 citizen response/call centre with a mobile app/internet interface is needed to enable citizens to file complaints, share pictures, etc. Each ward should also have a clear list of officials and phone numbers of health , sanitation , electrical , water supply indicated on website and prominent places – OP Mishra

3. Privatization should be explored. Most MCs have good reasons to keep things in a bad shape. New contracts and new money. Privatized institutions with metrics tied to output should be the way. There are many parts of the city which are not maintained by MCs - Private company campus, industrial cities, gated communities and they all are much cleaner – Deepak GD

4. Waste management is an expert job and has to planned and executed in a planned and professional way. It cannot be left entirely to an unskilled labour and needs a scientific latest technology work force at all levels apart from the fact that it must be every citizen's responsibility to keep the city clean and pay fines for littering the streets – Dr. Yogender Sharma

5. Nature of duties of the elected members of the local bodies needs revision. Political will is lacking in many places- this is the major key issue and the root causes are the majority and fixed 5 year term. The key issues and root causes stated above are manageable within 24 hours if there is proper leadership and political will – Krishnan Shanmukhan

6. The management of waste is joint responsibility of Institution as well as people equally. Become the Municipal Corporation provide menses for caring solid waste management but not force you to every day to through waste in vehicles are appropriate place. So the people of country is equally responsible for mismanagement of Solid waste and un-cleanses – Hari Ram Prajapati

7. Plastic cover must be band use paper cover is mandatory for all sales areas in India including biscuits, chocolate covers must be banned soon then only save the environment use paper boxes covered with colour papers for attraction to save our nation – Sangetha Geeth

8. There is conspicuous difference in level of cleanliness in different areas within a city. It’s not just Municipal workers who are responsible. It’s also us citizens, they work in similar fashion throughout city but level of cleanliness differs with kind of citizens occupying it. I shall shortly click photos and upload to demonstrate it – Aditi Mishal

9. Municipal/Corporation offices don't basically have the professional, clean & Hygienic working environment. The offices and surrounding doesn't encourage or motivates employees to do the duties they are employed for. These looks like a dump yard and place only for doing filthy things and getting salary every month-end and fetching extra money whenever asked to do something – Swaraj Dutta Gupta

10. Corporation should take weekly inspection as well keep provision for receiving complaints against public/societies/establishments who compound waste management woes – Venkitasubramanian

11. The mobile number, land line number and email id to which complaints, poor conditions of road, unclear garbage, street lights complaints including their glowing in the day time etc., could be reported should be published in painted boards in more than one place in the wards. Such complaints received should be acknowledged giving a unique number for tracking status through website. Appellate authority and his mail id should be provided for cases pending than more than specified time say day, week, month etc. – Srinivasan A

12. Garbage pickup from designated points should be tracked through either GPS or simply through mobile messaging including transmitting photos of clean garbage bins post pick up. The location identifications could through some designated shops / buildings / signboards around the garbage bins. This will ensure tracking of completion of the task by the pickup vans – Anjan Banerjee

13. Elected representatives and permanent employees need to be totally focussed in their responsibilities so that they can take care and respond to the needs of people of the locality. Punctuality in all respects is very essential. Motto should be to take care of the locale and community they are responsible for to the best of their abilities – Debashis Mohanty

14. Ward Officers are supposed to undertake daily rounds to identify encroachments, illegal constructions, potholes, accumulation of garbage etc. however this never happens. Therefore, Ward Officers should have to put their attendance in a register maintained with societies so that he can sign. During his visit which can be once a week, grievances can be submitted to him. The daily input of signature shows that he attended each locality regularly and their problems were discussed/submitted – A Panikar