Dwarkites seem sceptical. The cleanliness app by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs is being promoted by the SDMC mayor, but residents know better.
To spread awareness about the cleanliness app, Swachhata-MoHUA, of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), South Delhi Municipal Corporation, or SDMC, is floating messages on various WhatsApp groups and citizens’ forums, urging residents to instal the same.
The app allows anyone to post a civic issue, which is then forwarded to the concerned city corporation and, thereafter, assigned to the sanitary inspector of the particular ward. One can download the app from Google Play Store.
The app captures the location automatically while the picture is being taken. One just needs to key in the landmark of the complaint location. The complaint is then assigned to the concerned sanitary inspector or engineer. Besides, the app has regular updates on the status of the complaint in the form of a push notification.
Residents have welcomed the move, especially after SDMC mayor Kamaljeet Sehrawat shared the significance of the app on various forums. However, the experience of navigating through it has not been a satisfactory one.
AK Parashar, from Sri Agrasen Apartments in Sector 7, who has been running a group called Mission Safe and Clean Dwarka, installed the app on his mobile. And here’s what he has to say: “I appreciate the system going digital, but I am not satisfied with its function. The app is slow and not too effective.”
Other SDMC apps, too, have not worked out too well, generating scepticism. The earlier initiatives of sending photographs to officials through WhatsApp and sending complaints through other apps didn’t go down too well.
President of Federation of RWAs of Sector 9, Advocate KS Bhati, said, “The corporation should focus on groundwork rather than the app. The whole system must be made smart in reality — and not through apps and smartphones. First, SDMC should ensure that the problems shared by people through whatever medium are actually resolved.”
NK Yadav of Sector 4 feels similarly. He said, “SDMC officials should meet people and take feedback. Area representatives are well aware that just digitisation won’t bring about any effective changes — that can only happen through coordination and accountability. Hundreds of photographs were shared by people during earlier initiatives, but the net result was not impressive. So the community has sort of lost faith in such initiatives.”
