The health department of the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) has undertaken a pilot project to keep a continuous track on mechanised sweeping machines.
The civic body has fitted vehicle tracking system (VTS) and sensors to one of its VT650 KamAvida road sweepers, which will enable officials to keep a watch on the operations of this machine. The health department intends to install the VTS and sensors on all sweeping machines.
Explaining the function of the VTS, Dr Nagkumar Kunchagi, Medical officer of Health (MOH) said, “The sensors have been installed on the side and central brushes and the vacuum cleaner of the machine. A health official sitting in his office can monitor the movement of the vehicle on the roads through the VTS and find out whether the road was actually cleaned or not.”
The road-sweepers are mounted on Tata chassis Eicher model. The PCMC adopted mechanised cleaning two years back. The heavy traffic areas like the National Highways, internal city highways and some important roads in Shahunagar require road sweepers.
The PCMC has also adopted Solid Waste Management. As per the MSW rules of 2000, the municipal corporation has to make provision for primary collection – the door-to-door collection. “We have three types of system for door-to-door collection. The first is the system of hand-cart for which we have appointed private contractor. About 345 people are engaged in door-to-door collection of segregated waste. One ganthagadi tekedar (garbage collector) collects waste from 250-300 households.”
In the second system, PCMC has adopted dust-bin free wards. People come and deposit their waste in special vehicles for collecting waste. The corporation has adopted this practice in 10 wards. Dustbins of various capacities like one cubic mt, 1.1 cubic mt and 4.5 cubic mt are placed in various locations according to the waste generated in that area. For secondary collection, PCMC have deployed about 31 compactors from KamAvida. There is one 15 cubic mt compactor, four 14 cubic mt compactors and twenty-seven 18 cubic mt compactors. “We also have VTS (vehicle tracking system) device to identify which dustbin has to be lifted by which vehicle.”
