Only 20% of garbage auto tippers in Bengaluru trackable

Less than 20% of auto tippers that go from door to door in the 198 BBMP wards to collect household waste are fitted with working GPS. The rest of the vehicles are just not trackable. In only 20 wards are GPS-fitted auto tippers more than 50% of the fleet.

And there are very few GPS-fitted auto tippers in more than 110 wards.

This has been the root cause of a tiff that has emerged between the BBMP’s finance department and the garbage contractors’ association.

The BBMP has achieved little success in ensuring that all the 5,400-odd auto tippers and 550 compactors are fitted with GPS, which is key to tracking whether waste-collecting vehicles have actually gone to each and every block of a neighbourhood. The civic body spends around Rs 40 crore a month on collecting garbage from households and transporting it to landfill sites or processing plants.

Wards such as Jayanagar East, Mathikere, Hosahalli, Laggere, Sunkenahalli, HMT, Bommanahalli and Manganapalya have the most GPS-fitted auto tippers. Among the laggards are Gottigere, Bilekhalli, Yelachenahalli, Hongasandra and Kengeri wards. There are more than 40 wards where GPS-fitted vehicles form less than 2% of the total fleet.

While the BBMP’s finance department has started withholding payments for not providing the GPS data as the proof of work, the solid waste management (SWM) division and the garbage contractors’ association argue that GPS data should not be treated as the only proof as it undertakes three levels of checks before approving payments.

“We have been trying to fix the issues related to GPS but things are so complex that we are unable to take its coverage beyond 50%,” a senior BBMP official said. “The GPS data is also not foolproof as we received GPS reports that around 60% of the auto tippers collected door-to-door waste on two days when the garbage contractors boycotted the work entirely,” he said.

The SWM division, the official said, has three levels of checks to verify the work done by auto tippers. The first is the level of assistant executive engineers and then there’s the level of marshals. “We also have the radio frequency identification (RFID) system to track the fleet of working auto tippers,” the official said.

Some, however, wonder why the BBMP is not able to fix the GPS issues. “It is important that GPS data is linked to bill payments. Only this will improve the quality of service,” said Sandhya Narayan, a solid waste management expert. “The BBMP does not have a real-time tracking system. It’s high time such a set-up was put in place. This will help in tracking auto tippers on similar lines as ride-hailing apps track cabs,” she said.

Basavaraj Kabade, the BBMP’s superintendent engineer and in charge of collection and transportation (C&T) of waste, did not respond to phone calls seeking comment.

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