Case against old contractors

A social worker has filed a private complaint with the Bangalore Metropolitan Task Force (BMTF) seeking a probe into the alleged irregularities involving old garbage contractors.

The complainant K Madhavaraju stated that following a Government Order in November 2008, the BMTF had probed irregularities by the BBMP officials and garbage contractors and a report was given to the BBMP Commissioner.

In the report, the BMTF had said that `890 crore was misappropriated during  the last four years. The report had recommended blacklisting of garbage contractors and suspension of 89 BBMP officials allegedly involved in the irregularities. At present, a case has been filed based on this report at the Lokayukta Court by Yediyur Councilor N R Ramesh.

Now, Madhavaraju stated that even after the BMTF probe report was submitted in 2008, the same contractors continued their work till 2012, causing a huge loss to the BBMP.

In his complaint, Madhavaraju alleged that the old garbage contractors claimed they employed 16,800 contract pourakarmikas, 2,794 tipper autos, 791 tipper lorries, 196 compactors and 11,000 pushcarts to clean the city and also claimed that the cost per year was Rs 430 crore. But in reality, the contractors had used just 25 per cent of the men and machinery they claimed to have employed.

They have violated tender clauses by not providing ESI and PF facilities to pourakarmikas, not installing GPS on garbage trucks and failing to enter number of trips made by their vehicles in the log book.

 Madhavaraju told Express, “Mumbai has twice the population of Bangalore and yet it spends only `191 crore on solid waste management system every year. The  BBMP is spending almost double the amount. I have requested the BMTF to conduct a detailed probe,” he said.