Garbage corruption stinking under South MCD’s nose?

The Vigilance Department of South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) has indicted massive irregularities by one of the concessionaires engaged in waste management by the Corporation.

The department, in a surprise inspection, has found that the logbook which contains movements of trucks carrying garbage from the assigned areas of South Delhi has details of garbage collection from areas of North MCD. 

It has also been suspected that the company, in order to reap profit, has increased quantity of garbage manifold in each ferry than the actual capacity of trucks engaged at the site. 

Blaming complicity of top leadership of BJP from the Corporation, officials and concessionaire, Leader of Opposition, Farhad Suri has demanded a CBI inquiry into the matter.

The Vigilance Department claimed that it, along with the Quality Control Cell and Engineering Department, had jointly conducted a raid in the West Zone on the intervening nights of September 15 and 16. 

The members inspected several routes where the concessionaire, M/s Delhi Metro Waste Handling LTD, has been engaged in collection of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) and transportation to Sanitary Landfill Site (SLF) located in Bhalswa for the last nine years.

“During inspection, a total of 21 vehicles were checked and during the inquiry of logbooks and drivers, it was found that three vehicles have collected garbage from Ramesh Nagar, an area of Karol Bagh Zone of North MCD.

The department, in its report, said that while asking for details about vehicles’ movement/weight at the SLF, the staff present failed to present the same. They advised to check the details online but no detail was found online. 

It was further seen that the concessionaire’s staff have been regularly posted at the site and are marinating the vehicles’ record instead of the SDMC staff who are authorised for this. 

The company staff were seen maintaining two registers, one for 25 trucks of its own company while another for 15 trucks outsourced by the company and the weight of MSW outsourced trucks were recorded almost double to the company’s truck.

“An outside vehicles have at times carried MSW in the range of 15.6 tonne while trucks of the same category/size which were got weighed in front of the inspection team carried MSW below 10 tonne. Another striking feature of the record was that the truck which was carrying maximum weight, was in the night time/wee hours of the day. 

Another point is weight carried by the regular trucks of the concessionaire is in the range of four to seven tonne. From the above facts, it is clears that outside trucks carrying building mix, pure rubbish as a weight in the range of 15 tonne can not be made up of pure MSW and this activity is being carried out during night hours,” said the report.

“With the revelation, it is clear that there is a huge corruption of crores of rupees which needs to be probed by the CBI. 

Irregularity can be judged from the fact that the logbook record shows carrying of 91 tonne by trucks which is more than 10 times of the actual capacity of trucks carrying MSW. The company is authorised to work in West the Zone of SDMC while it is carrying waste of Karol Bagh Zone of North MCD,” said Suri.