Cuttack, June 7: The mechanised road sweeping machines, which were introduced here last month, have so far failed to leave an impression. These machines have not yet started operating on over 70 per cent of the roads in the Millennium City.
Chief minister Naveen Patnaik had launched these machines on May 16. They were supposed to operate on 48 major roads across the city. However, till date, most of the main roads are yet to see the machines.
Mechanised sweeping was adopted under an Integrated Municipal Solid Waste Management Project. Ramky Enviro Engineers Limited (REEL) of Hyderabad had entered into an agreement with Cuttack Municipal Corporation (CMC) to implement the project under a five-year contract for sweeping, collection, transportation and disposal of municipal solid waste.
The REEL officials conceded that the mechanised sweepers had not been operated on over 70 per cent of the main roads so far. “The condition of roads has slowed down the work by the machines,” REEL project head Srikant Choudhury told The Telegraph today. “While patch work has been on in almost half the stretch of Ring Road along the Kathajodi river and the Mahanadi river, free movement of the sweeping machines has not been possible on most main roads due to drain reconstruction work,” he said.
The private operator had started with three machines fitted with water sprinklers and brushes for sweeping and collecting dirt, sand, pebbles and leaves covering a length of 500km after 9.30pm. Each had waste-handling capacity of 5.5 tonnes — enough to sweep seven to eight kilometres in less than eight hours and provide over 60 times more output than manual sweepers.
“No tangible change has been visible on the roads after introduction of the mechanised sweepers. More so the machines have apparently not been covering the road here everyday,” said Amlan Patnaik, a resident of Badambadi area.
Trilochan Das of Manglabag and Raja Das of Kanika Chakh said they were yet to see the machines in their area.
Mayor Saumendra Ghosh hoped that the things would improve as two more mechanised sweepers had been added to REEL’s fleet of machines on Monday. “We expect things to be streamlined and all major roads covered with completion of road and drain repair works by the end of this month,” Ghosh said. “Sweeping work also slowed down at times as the machines could not be operated on the wet roads after rain,” he added.
Choudhury said: “Rain will not be a problem now. The two machines imported from Korea for Rs 1.8 crore have the additional feature of a four inch suction line which can sweep the roads even during rain.”
He said the effect of mechanised sweeping would be visible only after the old deposits on the roads were cleared. “The process will take at least 20 days. We hope to make the city dust free by another month,” he said.
As per the contract, mechanised sweepers would be used on all main roads covering 500km. In the remaining 300km of internal roads where the mechanised process cannot be adopted, manual sweeping would be undertaken.
“We have engaged 450 persons for manual sweeping,” Choudhury said.
The Rs-60crore Integrated Municipal Solid Waste Management Project, under which mechanised sweeping has been adopted, is the first-of-its-kind to be implemented by a civic body in the state.
