(Siasat News)Will the garbage vehicles of GHMC vanish from the roads or will there be new vehicles?
Standing Committee of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation rejected the proposal of buying garbage vehicles saying that instead of buying the new garbage vehicles of less capacity, it is better to use new technology for sweeping the city roads.
Standing Committee is of the opinion that instead of extracting works from the sweepers, it is better to deploy automatic machines for sweeping the roads. The employees’ Union opines that it will lead to unemployment of the laborers.
Rejecting the proposal for the purchases of new garbage vehicles, the Mayor asked the officials to prepare a report on the functioning of the sweepers.
The Municipal authorities had the proposals of purchasing imported truck mounted sweeping maching, which cost Rs.one crore each.
They also had the proposals of buying the smaller automatic sweeping machines.
It may be noted that at present, GHMC has 6 bigger sweeping machines. The Mayor opined that without reviewing the functioning of the present automatic sweeping machines, it would be too early to take a decision to buy some more new machines. These vehicles were purchased in 2007-08. There has been a tremendous development in technology during the past five years. The machines with modern technology may accelerate the work. The present sweeping machine can clean the roads up to 12 km and the compact machines can cover an area of 7 km in an hour. The officers stated that for sweeping 100-150 km long roads, a few more machines are required.
Employee Union is also opposing the purchase of sweeping machines. They have apprehensions that if automatic sweeping machines are deployed, the number of laborers would decrease. They also contended that 30% of the workers remain absent and there is also a danger of accidents during night hours. They also say that the contractors who engage these laborers usurp their salaries. On the other hand, there is an opinion that the officials are pressing for the purchase of modern sweeping machine because they receive personal benefit.
Additional Commissioner (Health/Sanitation) Mr. L.Vandana Kumar told that a proposal was submitted to GHMC earlier for purchasing these machines on “Buy, Operate and Own” (BOO) basis, in which case GHMC doesn’t have to buy these machines. The officials told that machines won’t be purchased without the approval of the Standing Committee and before buying them every minute detail would be examined scrupulously.
—-Siasat News