BANGALORE: Taking umbrage to garbage lying uncollected in their wards, BBMP councillors, cutting across party lines, blamed BVG India Ltd for the mess on Wednesday.
BVG had won the maximum number of tenders for garbage management in 2012. The blame game started with Pattabhiramanagar ward councillor C K Ramamurthy pointing out that garbage lay strewn in his ward, one of the 22 wards under the ‘garbage-free’ initiative.
“The tender was allotted to BVG which quoted 20 per cent lesser than others. But they have not deployed sufficient men and machinery and this has resulted in heaps of garbage across my ward and Jayanagar. We need to blacklist BVG,” he said.
Chandrashekar Raju, JP Nagar ward councillor, too called for a boycott of the company noting that it put pourakarmikas at risk by not giving them gloves or shoes as stated in tender norms.
“While people are segregating the waste, it is being mixed in garbage trucks. We had identified black spots in my ward and no special attention was given to this,” he complained.
Kuvempunagar ward councillor Yashodamma of Congress said BVG’s contract for her ward was suspended, but the company was back in action.
Pourakarmikas’ Recruitment
T Mallesh, Subashnagar councillor, demanded to know why the BBMP failed to recruit 4,000 pourakarmikas when the state government had given its nod for the same.
While Mayor B S Sathyanarayana attributed the delay to the code of conduct that was in place, BBMP Commissioner M Lakshminarayana said a notification will be issued by the end of this month.
Questions on Landfill
The councillors sought to know whether the Doddballapur gram panchayat had issued a No Objection Certificate for a landfill to come up in the area.
Banshankari temple ward councillor A H Basavaraju elaborated on problems that surfaced when landfills were set up at Mandur and Mavallipuram.
Terming the Doddballapur landfill a ‘safe’ project, Lakshminarayana said the BBMP had called for tenders for the Doddballapur project in March last year. “MSGP Infratech Pvt Ltd will bear the entire cost,” he stressed.
WHO IS AT FAULT, COMMISSIONER?
BBMP Commissioner M Lakshminarayana maintained that the civic body did not frame stringent norms in tender documentation. “We did not specify how many kilometres a pourakarmika should sweep nor the number of trucks required per ward. This was our mistake,” he said. The BBMP has cancelled the contract awarded to BVG India in Yelahanka zone but the company has approached the High Court and the case is going on, he added.