Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike

BBMP

Sarfaraz Khan

Bengaluru

truck 2

Balasubramaniam

RTO

You can smell them from a mile away. Even if somehow the stench is masked the stench, it’s quite a task to hide these six-wheeled behemoths. And yet thecan’t seem to find – wait for it – around 100 garbage compactors.Joint Commissioner, solid waste management, has now ordered that payment for these garbage trucks be stopped immediately; it can be resumed only after the trucks are found. BBMP currently has 594 garbage trucks; 74 belong to the civic body and the rest are operated by contractors.The Palike pays anywhere between Rs 1.5 lakh and Rs 1.7 lakh every month for each truck run by the contractor. The compactor contract system was introduced way back in 2013. At a very conservative estimate of Rs 1.5 lakh/month for 100 trucks over the past 60 months, somebody seems to have made over Rs 90 crore at BBMP’s expense.The scam came to light after the high court directed the BBMP to form the ward micro plan for solid waste management in Bengaluru. All the 198 ward committees constituted on October 31, 2017, were asked to prepare a ward level plan to “ensure proper solid waste management and sanitation work in the ward and finalise location of new public sanitation units”. As per the micro plan, a ward was split into blocks (750 households + small commercial units) to which manpower and vehicles were allotted. An auto tipper is supposed to collect wet waste from these 750 households and commercial units. These auto tippers (with carrying capacity of 500 kg) were further allotted compactors (at 10 tonnes capacity, each compactor takes care of 20 auto tippers).For further streamlining of waste collection and for accountability, BBMP issued RFID (Radio Frequency Identification Device) tags to all the compactor drivers; they are supposed to flash the cards at the landfills or solid waste management plants to trace where garbage is being dumped. It was then that the BBMP realized that 100 such drivers never turned up to dump garbage. “They seem to have disappeared. The search is continuing,” said, BBMP joint commissioner, solid waste management.“We have no idea where these 100 compactors have gone. We also do not know whether they ever went on garbage collection and dumping rounds every day. I have asked the officials from the department to look for these 100 compactors and compile a list with their registration numbers. I have put on hold the payments to contractors until the compactors are physically found,” he continued.Garbage compactors first came toin 2008 but they were made mandatory for in 2013. A large number of compactors are run by contractors with deep links to politicians and BBMP officials.Balasubramaniam, a garbage contractor, says he had suggested to Khan several times to keep an account of the compactors. “I had also suggested to check the vehicles physically and make payments only if the compactor is working but nobody bothered. Although Sarfaraz Khan is an efficient officer, he couldn’t control it as he trusts the Palike engineers too much.”Khan says all auto tippers and compactors will be fitted with GPS devices to prevent a repeat. “We will be able to track each and every vehicle in the city. We have already introduced biometric attendance for pourakarmikas. With this, the number of sanitation workers on BBMP’s rolls has reduced from around 34,000 earlier to around 17,000 now. That translates into a saving of about Rs 250 crore every year,” he said.claimed the engineers divert compactors to collect waste from bulk generators like hotels, mega apartment blocks and commercial establishments. “If the Joint Commissioner of SWM had not given such powers to these engineers this would never have happened. A physical check of all these compactors by BBMP along withofficials should be done immediately. That could easily save the BBMP over Rs 400 crore every year,” he said.Leo Saldanha, a citizen activist and founder, Environment Support Group, said: “This is the way BBMP has been working for years. There is no scrutiny of the works that are being undertaken. Corruption has been systematized in the BBMP which is why the Comptroller and Auditor General has come down heavily on Palike and its system. If the segregation has taken place on ward level then there is no need for huge number of compactors in the city. The garbage crisis in the city has deliberately been created. A thorough enquiry is required in this issue.”