BMP contractors strike gold in garbage

BMP contractors strike gold in garbage
New Indian Express

BANGALORE: The Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BMP) continues to take up great tasks when its administrative mechanism is pathetic. As a consequence, the garbage contractors are all set to laugh their way to banks.

The civic body had allocated Rs 50 crore for garbage management in the current budget, but the new contracts are worth Rs 85.44 crore per year.

Though the BMP council and the Government approved the revised contracts, questions are being raised on the enforceability of the new terms of contract. BMP is issuing mobilisation orders to the contractors, though many loopholes are yet to be plugged.

Important terms of agreement which the contractors have always infringed upon include the age of the trucks and overestimation of manpower used.

Since these are essentially labour contracts, contractors show more manpower on record than actually employed.

The labourer is paid much less than the wage on record. The contract terms also stipulate that the poura karmikas (PK) must be provided with provident fund and employee state insurance (ESI) - something most PKs never heard of.

The 32 new packages will increase the number of PKs from 7200 to 11,000, which works out to 110 per ward of an average size of 2-3 square kilometres having about 5,000 households.

There will be about 600 garbage trucks that are not supposed to be older than 15 years and new contracts would replace the pushcarts with about 400 motorised vehicles. But BMP has no mechanism to monitor compliance with contract terms.

The junior health inspectors are expected to monitor the job every day but the civic body has a shortfall of these staff to the extent of 130.

BMP has asked the garbage contractors to parade all their men and machines on December 4, though the civic body is ill-equipped to ensure that the contractors use the resources that they claim to possess.

The contractors still use vehicles older than 15 years, though the existing norms ban them.

Medical officers (Health) would be making all payments to the contractors and BMP hasn’t done enough to check corruption at MoH level.