Mysuru: Thinking Mysuru city will retain its cleanest city tag for the third consecutive year, N Mara, President, Mysuru Mahanagara Palike Pourakarmikara Sangha had planned various programmes including felicitation to corporation officials including commissioner, corporators and Mayor but Indore shattered the dream by emerging as the cleanest city in the country. Mysuru which won the coveted title for the two consecutive years had slipped to fifth place.
“Few days ago, that is when the phone call from Delhi came to attend the award ceremony, many of us thought that it is almost certain that Mysuru city will retain the cleanest city tag for the third consecutive year. Many officials and even Mayor Ravi Kumar was confident that they will be receiving the cleanest city award again on May 4. So keeping this in mind, we had planned to distribute sweets and for the first time we had also arranged for a felicitation function to corporation officials and corporators on May 5 but the results disappointed us. However, we are happy winning fifth place in the country atleast where nearly 434 cities took part in the competition”, said Mara who is working as Pourakarmika for the past nearly 30 years and has visited three foreign countries, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand to study good practices adopted there.
A disappointed 42-year-old Mahadevi, who is working as a pourakarmika in ward No. 3 and who was also praying to get the cleanest city tag for Mysuru again said, “We were misinformed about getting the cleanest city tag award for the third consecutive year but now it’s really shocking to hear that Mysuru slipped to fifth place. Infact, many of our colleagues told me that banners were also put up in few places in city that Mysuru city had bagged the cleanest city award for the third consecutive year. To achieve the cleanest city tag, for few months we even worked for more than 12 hours a day without demanding any extra money.”
Mysuru city has scored good marks for cleanliness, which means Pourakarmikas have done their job but it was in the parameters related to public opinion and individual toilets which affected the scores.
