Bhubaneswar, April 12: The state government has asked the local civic body to drop its ambitious plan of online monitoring of garbage-carrying vehicles citing less usage.

In 2015, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) had decided to hire a consultant to design a system for tracking routes and activities of the garbage-carrying vehicles.

It finally implemented the scheme on a pilot basis by installing global positioning system (GPS) devices on 60 such vehicles in January.

However, the housing and urban development department recently issued an order to the civic body asking them to stop the projects, since it felt that the project was sheer "wastage of funds".

In its order, the department stated that since most urban local bodies had outsourced solid waste management to various private agencies, the civic body's vehicles were not being used any longer. Therefore, tracking of the BMC's garbage-carrying vehicles made no sense to the government.

"The decision of not having the tracking system for waste-carrying vehicles will be implemented in all urban local bodies of the state.

"Installing such equipment on civic body's vehicles will be a waste of funds and time since private agencies are hired to take care of solid waste management in urban areas. There are provisions to penalise the agencies for dereliction of duty," said an official of the housing and urban development department.

The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation, however, is yet to receive any such order.

"We will stop the service once we get the official communication," said mayor Ananta Narayan Jena.