1,307 auto-tippers vanish from BBMP registry

More skeletons are tumbling out of the BBMP closet, exposing the corrupt underbelly of Bengaluru’s garbage disposal system.

A few months after a fake billing scam involving auto-tippers that collect garbage daily, now another scam has left the civic body perturbed.

According to the BBMP’s registry, out of the 2,580 registered auto-tippers entrusted with collecting door-to-door garbage, only 1,273 auto-tippers are at work, marking their attendance at the ward level.

A recent audit of the BBMP’s auto-tipper registry has revealed that about 1,307 registered auto-tippers have just vanished despite authentication by the jurisdictional asssistant executive engineers (AEEs).

Alarmed by the previous fake billing scam, the BBMP had developed an auto-tipper registration (ATR) system and the BBMP tipper software in which 27 AEEs posted at the ward level were to mark the attendance of registered auto-tippers.

The registry has revealed that not even 50% of registered auto-tippers are attending to their works regularly and marking attendance using the Radio Frequency Identification Device (RFID) platform.

Following complaints from the residents of various localities that the auto-tippers are irregular, DH did a reality check with one of the AEEs and accessed details of the attendance registry. The registry, a copy of which is with DH, revealed that many auto-tippers remain just on paper.

“This is indeed a big let down. A few wards have not even marked attendance at all. The vehicles have to mark their attendance twice — before starting work in the morning and later after dumping the garbage into compactors. As many as 1,307 auto-tippers are missing. We recommend the BBMP deduct the payment to vehicles that are absent,” an engineer said.

For every 750 houses, one auto-tipper is allotted as per the 2016 Solid Waste Management (SWM) rules. “The city needs 4,466 auto-tippers. Initially, it was found that several fake registries were made to siphon off funds. We ordered the AEEs to verify the tippers physically and re-register them. Out of the 2,580 tippers, 1,307 have just vanished,” explained another engineer.

BBMP pays Rs 57,000 per tipper every month.

Acknowledging a huge mismatch between what had been registered and what the ground reality is, D Randeep, additional commissioner, SWM, said: “Online attendance system has found only 50% registered tippers are working. We have assumed that this is the actual strength and a genuine number of tippers working across Bengaluru today. We will not make payments to the missing auto-tippers.”