Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike

contractors

Bengaluru

Sarfaraz Khan

..

landfill

PERFECT 10: This is how trash contractors are multiplying their income, with a little help from BBMP officials

By Manoj SharmaA few months ago, the Bangalore Mirror had reported about the curious case of missing compactors and auto tippers from the(BBMP). Well the mystery has been solved. But here’s how it was done with minimum blood, sweat and tears.There were supposed to be 628 compactors, of which 100 went missing. Out of a total registered 3584 auto tippers, only 2,537 could be authenticated.BBMP has now claimed that about 139 compactors were not in service and 1,047 auto tippers didn’t collect garbage.But the BBMP continued to pay Rs 59,000 to each auto tipper and Rs1.5 lakh to each compactor in the city.Thecheated the BBMP by registering the same vehicle multiple times, receiving money for each auto tipper and compactor which never existed. (Shockingly all these fake vehicle numbers were cleared by the ward level engineers.)Assuming, one contractor had claimed to have 10 auto tippers, but registered one vehicle 10 times, he made an additional Rs 5,31,000 per month. With compactors, if a contractor had claimed to have 10 vehicles, he would have earned Rs 1,500,000 per month, doing, literally nothing.Meanwhile, BBMP continued to fork out money for garbage which was not collected and deposited.Sarfaraz Khan, Joint Commissioner of Solid Waste Management, BruhatMahanagara Palike (BBMP) who earlier had claimed that about 100 compactors and 3,500 auto tippers had gone missing has now written to D Randeep, Additional Commissioner, Administration saying that those “missing compactors and auto tippers were never for real.”In his letter to D Randeep,wrote, “We received 3,584 entries from all zones collectively. When we tried to validate each auto tipper with National Transport database, huge ambiguities were found. To my surprise only 2537 auto tippers could be authenticated of the total registered 3584. Also, the fitness certificate of 25 to 30 per cent of such auto tippers had expired 5 years back,” it read.The letter also says that of the total 628 uploaded compactors, only about 489 compactors were authenticated and about 139 compactors did not have any registration or authenticity.Khan said they decided to analyse the data with that of the Ministry of Transport because despite BBMP dividing the city into blocks, wards and zones and employing technology to identify each compactor and auto tipper, their efforts were not yielding the desired results.The letter further read, “Initially, we developed an app (BBMPGVM) to monitor the vehicles. All compactor drivers were provided with RFID-enabled smart cards. When these compactors arrived at their reattributed destinations i.e. plants orsites, smart cards were scanned, and then the compactors would be allowed or refused entries and the system would capture the details of the vehicles ,weight of garbage brought in, time of entry to a plant or landfill as the case may be. At the end of the day a comprehensive report was generated and sent digitally to the commissioner’s office. This app would also help us identify the vehicles that didn’t perform and monthly bills generated on the basis of performance of such compactors.”A similar system was put in place to monitor auto tippers.An official from BBMP said, “While cross checking the details of registered auto tippers and compactors with the transport ministry’s data, we found that many such vehicle numbers were registered as two-wheelers, ambassador cars and mopeds. On checking further, we found that many of the vehicles for which bills were raised and payments made did not exist at all. We could not find any information about the registration details of those vehicles,” he said.Speaking to Bangalore Mirror, Khan said, “Despite vehicles shown in the records and BBMP paying the bills on time, garbage was neither collected nor cleared. We always knew that something was wrong somewhere, and that’s why we decided to investigate. This is absolutely shocking. We have written to the higher officials. Including payments made to fake pourakarmikas, the BBMP is estimated to have lost around Rs 400 Cr in the past four years.”Speaking to Bangalore Mirror, D Randeep, Additional Commissioner, Administration, BBMP said, “Joint Commissioner has conveyed the issue to me. I have also received the report just now. We will examine the report and data and will definitely take legal action against all the people who have looted taxpayers’ money. We will consider the issue seriously,” he said.