Swachh Survekshan 2018: Akshay Kumar To Spread Awareness For Mumbai’s Civic Body

New Delhi: In order to improve Mumbai’s swachh rankings for Swachh Survekshan 2018, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has roped in India’s very own ‘Toilet Man’ and ‘Pad Man’ – actor Akshay Kumar. On January 5, Ajoy Mehta, Municipal Commissioner sent a letter to the actor and asked him to partner with Mumbai’s civic body and help spread the word about Swachhta in the city and appeal to the people of Mumbai to maintain high standards of cleanliness in the city and ensure that their city performs better during the Survekshan. The cleanliness survey is beingcarried out between January 4 and March 10 by the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs and will rank urban and rural areas of the country on the basis of cleanliness.

Also Read: World’s Largest Cleanliness Survey, #SwachhSurvekshan2018 Gets Underway. Here’s How India Marked Its First Day

According to the civic officials, Akshay Kumar promptly agreed to be part of the swachh campaign.

Akshay Kumar will be an integral part of BMC’s Swachh Survekshan 2018 team and help promote the cleanliness campaign in the city through public service announcements (PSA) in the form of videos/radio jingles and so on. The actor has already recorded a short video where he is thanking citizens of Mumbai for their contribution towards cleanliness in the city.

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The reason why Akshay has been roped in the campaign at first place is simple – his contribution towards Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, is well-known. First the actor promoted an important message of open defecation free villages through his movie, Toilet: Ek Prem Katha and now, the actor is on a journey to educate people about menstrual hygiene and menstrual waste management. If Akshay will tell people something, they will surely listen and that’s why BMC decided to include Akshay in their survekshan campaign, said a senior BMC official.

In 2017, Mumbai’s swachh rank had dropped to 29th from the 10th place in 2016. In a bid to improve city’s swachh rank now, BMC is leaving no stone unturned. As a first step, the civic body has included a prominent personality in its campaign.

Kiran Dighavkar, Assistant Commissioner, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, adds,

Public feedback remains a major concern for us and we have performed quite poorly there in the last year. This is why we now want to ramp up citizen engagement. For instance, we plan to encourage citizens to start segregating their waste and want more feedback on their concerns.

This year, Mumbai and other cities will be ranked on a total of 4,000 marks, and 35% weightage is being given to citizen feedback alone.

Apart from Mumbai, the Survekshan will assess all the 4,041 towns in the country and will impact 40 crore urban population. 500 cities will be ranked on national level which have more than 1 lakh population, while 3,541 cities with less than 1 lakh population will have State and Regional ranking.

In 2017 survey, only 434 cities with over 1 lakh population and all the state capitals were ranked. While in 2016, mere 73 cities with over 10 lakh population and all the state capitals were ranked.