BENGALURU: If all goes well, citizens will get to see mechanical sweepers keeping the city roads free from dust and pollution. These sweepers will clean major arterial and sub-arterial roads, including market places such as K R Market and Russell Market, on a pilot basis. To begin with, the BBMP will introduce eight large sweepers and a small mechanical sweeper, shortly.
Sarfaraz Khan, BBMP joint commissioner (solid waste management), told DC, “The density of vehicles on the roads have increased drastically. With people speeding with their vehicles on roads and even on footpaths, cleaning activities on major roads in the city are getting affected. There are instances where the Pourakarmikas who were cleaning the main roads were even injured by speeding vehicles. Only after it was seen that the pourakarmikas found it difficult to clean main roads, we thought of introducing mechanical sweepers.”
“With the aim of keeping the roads free from dust, we will be introducing eight large and one mechanical sweeper shortly. They will be put on a trial run and based on how effectively they clean the roads, we will introduce more such mechanical sweepers in the city,” Sarfaraz said.
Explaining how the mechanical sweepers work, Sarfaraz said, “Mechanical sweepers will have brushes at the bottom which sweep the dust and with the help of the suction mechanism, the swept dust will be sucked into the truck. They are designed in such a way that they can even clean minute dust up to five cubic meters and they can clear small stones and all the dry leaves too.”
No hiring this time
Earlier, BBMP had two mechanical sweepers which were used to sweep airport and VVIP roads. “The mechanical sweepers were taken on rent. For a job of 8 hours a day, the month's rent for one sweeper was Rs 12 lakh. The maintenance was getting costly for us, so we chose to buy them. Delhi-based TPS Infrastructure Ltd will be supplying the sweepers. One large truck-mounted mechanical sweeper will cost around Rs 90 lakh," Sarfaraz Khan said.
