BMP to spend Rs. 270 crore on cleaning city

BMP to spend Rs. 270 crore on cleaning city

The Hindu

MLA seeks probe into the matter; to raise issue in the Legislative Assembly

# The number of health wards have gone up from 182 to 245
# Officials say annual cost of cleaning has gone up from Rs. 38 crore to Rs. 90 crore

BANGALORE: Did you know that the Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BMP) will spend a whopping Rs. 270 crore in the next three years on cleaning the city?

This amount is apart from the salaries and other expenses incurred by the civic body on the 4,500 civic workers, who are on its rolls.

Though the BMP allocated adequate funds for cleaning the city in its budget for 2006-2007, the civic body would feel the pinch only after the new garbage tenders, which had been recently approved by the BMP Council, come into force in the next two months.

Officials justify that the annual cost of cleaning had gone up from Rs. 38 crore to Rs. 90 crore because the number of health wards (cleaned by private contractors) had been increased from 182 to 245. The increase in health wards would also mean escalation of fuel costs and service tax for the contractors.

Besides, according to tender guidelines, the contractors would have to use machines to clean the city.

Mechanised cleaning had been allotted in a separate package to two contractors this time. But a few elected representatives were critical about the cost escalation and feel that the BMP would be wasting taxpayers' money on the same set of contractors for the same kind of "shoddy" service they had been providing.

According to a study done by Basavanagudi MLA K. Chandrashekar, who is also the Hanumanthnagar corporator, the BMP would spending over Rs. 4.2 crore extra on cleaning the additional 63 health wards. "This additional expenditure is almost double the amount the BMP is presently spending on cleaning the existing 182 health wards," the study pointed out.

A comparison between the amount spent on cleaning six wards of Govindrajnagar, Chandra Layout, Jagjivanramnagar, Hanumanthnagar, Padmanabhanagar and Hombegowdanagar in 2003-2004 and that to be spent in 2006-2007 showed that the BMP would spend over Rs. 62 lakh extra just for deploying 532 more workers, five extra lorries and 16 additional autos.

New contracts

According to the new contracts, the BMP would spend a total of over Rs. 45 lakh more than last year on cleaning in Govindrajnagar, Hanumanthnagar and Padmanabhanagar; Rs. 11 lakh more for Chandra Layout and Rs. 7 lakh for Hombegowdanagar.

The number of workers and vehicles deployed here had been slightly increased this time.

But in Jagjivanramnagar, the workforce had been reduced from 149 to 100 and autos from 16 to 13. But still the civic body would spend Rs. 6.19 lakh more than last year.

"How will the costs escalate when you have reduced the workforce and also the number of vehicles? This is ridiculous," Mr. Chandrashekar told The Hindu .

Demanding a probe into the matter, he said that he would take up the issue in the Legislature.