Bhubaneswar, June 30: The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided to go for mobile phone-based management of garbage disposal to ensure best possible results.

The decision, which was taken during the Council meeting yesterday, followed a pilot study conducted in ward No. 52 for a month early this year.

Also known as mobile governance (m-governance), the system would work with the help of mobile phones, each one using a standard configuration, and an in-built camera.

The user, generally a supervisory officer of the BMC or local councillor, can take photographs of a particular place during surprise checks to see whether garbage has actually been cleared or not.

Once this system becomes operational, even attendance of the sweeping staff can be taken in the morning so that it can be used as an attendance registry and compared with the monthly attendance sheet.

However, the most interesting part of the m-governance system is that the contractors who are engaged in the sanitation work in the city cannot cheat the BMC authorities with old photographs taken on a mobile phone, which is loaded with the software.

Even if the phone has got the software, the global positioning system (GPS) and its co-ordination with the central server can make out if anyone is trying to cheat the authorities with an old photo.

“The central server will have an authentication system called ‘server stamping’ that can detect the coordinates, i.e. the latitude and longitude of a place.

“As a photographic position can never be repeated as per the latitude and longitude, the authentication system will work just like matching fingerprints. Also there cannot be any change in timing as the person concerned has to be there to click , save and send the photo to the central server,” said municipal commissioner Vishal Kumar Dev.

The pilot study was done by Hyderabad-based Bluefrog Mobile Technologies Private Limited.

Now, the BMC authorities are planning to select a player who will execute the project across all wards.

“Tendering for selection of the operator and execution of project will take some time. So, by the end of this year the project would be ready for launch,” Dev said.

He added: “The monitoring part of the m-governance system will be through a call centre and it would be managed by an outsourced agency. The outsourcing process will help us in maintaining transparency.”

Deputy municipal commissioner Priyadarshi Mohapatra said if the photograph of a bin was taken at 8.30am and sent to the central server, then another photograph sent at about 5.30pm would certainly be different from the one sent in the morning, as the garbage would have been cleared by then.

However, if there is no difference in the status of the solid waste, then the BMC can make out whose fault it is and start a screening process.

Even the transit transport stations to lift solid waste for the dumping ground can be linked to the software and they can come under the screening process.

Councillor of ward No. 52, Nrupesh Kumar Nayak said solid waste disposal has become a major concern due to the lack of a solid waste management plant in the city.

“We are receiving complaints of inadequate service from almost all the wards. Once this new system becomes operational, we would be able to find out the truth behind all these allegations,” he said.

“From the pilot study in ward No. 52 we have received interesting feedback on the system, both in terms of waste disposal, lifting and taking the attendance of the cleaning staff.

“So, if it is implemented across the city then the entire standard of solid waste disposal would go up by many notches.

“As the system is GPS-based and the road maps of every nook and corner of the city is available on the internet, incorporating ward boundaries and pointing the dustbins at different locations would enable the operators to monitor the system,” added Nayak.

As per data available from BMC sources, the city generates 450 metric tonnes per day (MTD) of solid wastes.

Out of this domestic is 252.39MTD, institutional 24.46 MTD, commercial 139.22MTD, street sweeping 2.2 MTD, construction demolition debris 17.42MTD and bio-medical wastes form 4.31MTD.

From these 325.41MTD is bio-degradable and 90.66MTD is non-bio-degradable. Projected generation of municipal solid waste by 2039 would be around 811.15MTD.