MUMBAI: With around 70% of its army of sweepers and garbage collection staff reporting for duty, the BMC is working hard to keep city roads clean even as the lockdown necessitated to curb the spread of coronavirus has reduced Mumbai’s garbage generation by 40%.

The municipality employs around 25,000 sweepers, including 5,000 provided by NGOs, to clean around 2,400km of roads daily. But, currently, 17,000 workers, wearing masks and gloves, are sweeping the roads and collecting around 3,800 tonnes of waste every day. “We are providing our sweepers and garbage collectors masks, gloves, sanitizer and soap to keep them safe. We have also instructed them not to go near suspected Covid-19 patients,” said a civic official.

Before the lockdown, said officials, the city generated around 6,300 tonnes of waste daily. The drop in garbage collection is due to the closure of hotels and restaurants, and reduction in food wastage. On March 21, civic workers picked up 6,515 tonnes of garbage from the city. The next day, when the nation observed the janata curfew, 3,714 tonne of waste was collected.

Officials said that BMCappointed bio-medical waste collectors are also visiting hospitals treating Covid-19 patients to pick up waste. As per the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board guidelines, the garbage collecting staff should use disposable personal protection equipment when picking up Covid-19 waste, which should be disposed of through incineration at its facilities.

In view of the lockdown, the BMC commissioner has instructed all ward officers to manage the transportation of its workers to and from work on BEST and state transport buses. The municipal corporation has also issued the workers passes as they are part of essential services and is paying them an additional Rs 300 a day and providing them one meal. The BMC will issue similar passes for ragpickers who separate dry and wet waste garbage at the waste segregation facilities, said officials.

Since garbage collection has reduced, the BMC is deploying fewer trucks to transport waste to Deonar and Kanjurmarg dumping grounds. Sources said that the private contactors involved in garbage transportation is facing difficulties to convince their staff not to leave the job. Also, as workers handling waste processing units at housing societies have fled to their hometowns in the wake of the coronavirus scare, the BMC has been collecting waste from bulk generators too. A civic official said, “We are getting calls from bulk garbage generators who would process their wet waste on their premises for collection as their workers have left after the lockdown.”