For the first time in the state, the New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA) has decided that all vehicles used for solid waste management including compactors, sweeping of roads including mechanical road sweeping machines will be brought under the GPS-enabled Vehicle Tracking System (VTS).
The decision was taken at the NKDA board meeting recently. The step has been taken to bring efficiency in civic services and monitor solid waste management and road sweeping accurately.
The location of the machine is time-logged onto a map and a software generates the distance travelled.
The effectiveness of sweeping is thus tracked accurately in realtime from a computer at the office of the engineer concerned.
The system was given a trial run for several months and now it will be installed in the major arterial road and finally VTS will be installed in all vehicles engaged in solid waste
management and road sweeping in internal roads in phases.
As New Town is coming up as a green city, proper monitoring of cleaning and sweeping of the roads and its solid waste management is absolutely necessary.
Several steps have already been taken to recycle waste water and use the same for watering plants used for beautification of the area. This apart, even streetlights will be replaced by LED lights in phases.
It may be mentioned that monitoring vehicles used for solid waste management and sweeping of roads is a major problem in all civic bodies.
During the Left regime, Kolkata
Municipal Corporation (KMC) garbage collected from open vats and offloaded at the Dhapa dumping ground. Rampant manipulation of trips by lorries carrying garbage had posed a serious problem and crores of rupees had been misappropriated.
Senior officials of state Urban development department said if successful in New Town, the NKDA's decision would be implemented in other civic bodies of the state as well.