Bangalore, Feb 2 (DHNS) : Mysore City Corporation, Udupi City Municipal Council and Kundapur Town Municipal Council have bagged the best urban local body awards in their respective categories for the year 2010.

The awards, instituted by the Urban Development Department in association with Directorate of Municipal Administration and with City Managers’ Association Karnataka, a Bangalore-based registered society of urban planners, were presented to the presiding officers of the urban local bodies on Tuesday.

In all, three awards with different cash prizes as performance incentive for the ULB were presented in each category (See box). Most of the awards have gone to cities and towns in coastal districts of Udupi and Dakshina Kannada. While Mysore and Belgaum city corporations and Gokak and Shimoga CMCs bagged awards, the entire Hyderabad-Karnataka region comprising the districts of Bidar, Gulbarga, Yadgir and Raichur among others has drawn a blank - a reflection on the poor sanitary conditions in the region. A total of 213 ULBs applied for the awards. The best performing ULB was selected based on actual performance as per Service Level Benchmarking (SLB) indicators. The SLB framework had 49 indicators across seven sectors including water supply, disease control, waste water management, solid waste management, roads, roadside drains and streetlight, disease control, development of parks and finances.

Urban Development Minister Suresh Kumar said weightages were assigned to each indicator, based on which the points and rankings were generated. Monthly reports were sought from the ULBs over the last six months.

For instance, water supply was given maximum weightage of 100 points, solid waste management 150 points, finances a maximum of 100 points and so forth. The maximum points  adds up to 525.

The Mysore City Corporation which bagged the first prize in the city corporations category with 334 points has done well across seven sectors, with its plus point being good finances and waste water management. The corporation has also been appreciated for its role in mobilising community participation to improve local area infrastructure. The corporation formed 686 citizen committees at the polling booth level and assisted them to improve local infrastructure.

Kundapur TMC with 345 points bagged the highest points across all ULBs. Kundapur’s efficient solid management programmes has become a model for others to emulate.
 
Five years back, the small coastal town was strewn with garbage. Citizens complained about the municipality’s ineffective service. In 2006, the municipality implemented a solid waste management project with the involvement of self help groups. Roads were classified into different sweeping schedules and allotted to sanitary workers. Metal containers replaced RCC bins. The waste was segregated at processing units. The compost generated was utilised by the municipality and rejects were then used in landfills. Today, the clean and garbage free surroundings have made their citizens proud to live in.

Suresh Kumar said the awards will be made an annual feature in a bid to create healthy competition among the ULBs. The sector-wise benchmarking also helps in tracking the strengths and weaknesses of the ULBs in service delivery for suitable policy intervention, he said.

Efforts to restore Kalyanis gets Chitradurga a pat

Over the past several hundred years, successive rulers of the fort town of Chitradurga have made significant contribution to preserve and recharge ground water by building tanks (Kalyanis) and open wells to store rainwater.

The ancient water system in the town is unique in many ways and an engineering marvel by itself.
Taking this forward, the Chitradurga City Municipal Council along with the district administration, NGOs, volunteers have made an effort to clean up the Kalyanis and restore its characteristics. The initiative has resulted in improving the ground water table in the surrounding area and at the same time retaining its traditional value.

For this, the Chitradurga CMC was on Tuesday presented the Best Practices Award 2010 under the CMC category.