Two road sweeping machines bought by the Varanasi Municipal Corporation over two and half years ago is lying unused at the VMC backyard. The machines costing र 50 lakh each were bought after approval from a committee that was formed to evaluate the cost effectiveness of the machines. One of the machines is designed to clean narrow roads and has a tractor base; the other used for wider roads sports a truck base.
The expensive and sophisticated machines meant to vacuum the roads and dividers are proving to be a problem to the dusty and pot hole ridden roads. The running costs of the machines are also high. It requires 15 litres of fuel per hour. Spending र 1000 for an hour as running costs for the machines is not feasible for the corporation, which has decided to stick to the cheaper alternative of manual cleaning in the interim.
