Soon, control room to track silt trucks

MUMBAI: Three years after the desilting scam, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will now set up a separate control room to monitor garbage and silt pick-up vehicles across the city, in real time. The decision was taken after the civic body found contractors mixing garbage with debris and dumping at wrong locations. This was being done despite BMC using the vehicle tracking monitoring system (VTMS) to monitor the vehicles.

Currently, all 24 ward officers check the feed any time. However, no single official is appointed to monitor the feed in real time.

Following the desilting scam which revealed the manipulation of records in the collection and transporting of silt, VTMS was introduced for both contractual and civic body pick-up vehicles.

The planned control room will be designed on the lines of the disaster control room and officials will be appointed to keep a tab on routes taken by vehicles fitted

with GPS. “Any vehicle which deviates from the prescribed routes will be red-flagged and action will be initiated,” said Vishwas Shankarwar, deputy municipal commissioner, solid waste management (SWM).

Civic chief Ajoy Mehta has asked the SWM department to record data on the number of vehicles in use and map the routes of each vehicle.