200km roads unswept as Gurugam civic body fails to pay fuel bills
MCG officials said fuel pump owners have declined to fill diesel in the road sweeping machines until their dues are cleared
At least 200 kilometres of roads in Gurugram have not been swept since Friday morning after the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) failed to clear the fuel bills of 13 road sweeping machinesthat became operational in August last year: Officials privy to the matter said on Monday that the civic body owes a total of ₹16 lakh to various fuel pump owners and the amount has remained unpaid for the past 12 months.
With the machines out of action, dust has accumulated along major roads like Golf Course Extension Road, Southern Peripheral Road, Sohna Road, and Dwarka Expressway, among others. This is a matter of concern, officials said, given that the peak pollution season, which usually starts around the time of Diwali (this year, it is fall on October 24), is just a little more than a month away.
“If this situation happens in October, when the peak pollution season starts, there would be a major problem as it would cause residents respiratory trouble. But since this is happening in September, in the last stage of the monsoon, dust accumulation is not that high,” said Rakesh Kapoor, a resident of DLF 5.
MCG officials said fuel pump owners have declined to fill diesel in the road sweeping machines until their dues are cleared. Officials said lack of funds is not the reason for the MCG not paying pump owners, but rather an administrative one.
“The outstanding dues for diesel pertain mainly to road sweeping machines; a small share of it also pertains to fogging machines. These dues until last year were cleared by the MCG’s health wing. When officials from the wing were transferred, the responsibility went to the planning branch and later to the accounts branch. Due to some confusion and miscommunication, funds amounting to ₹16 lakh have not been paid to fuel pump owners for the past 12 months,” said a senior MCG official, asking not to be named.
MCG officials said the payment will be made by Tuesday, after which the machines will be back on the road.
“Senior MCG officials were apprised about the dues. The claims were inspected found to be genuine. The MCG commissioner has now given the task of clearing such dues to the Swachh Bharat wing, and we are in the process of making the payments. It will be completed by Tuesday and the road sweeping machines will be operational again,” said a senior official in Swachh Bharat wing, asking not be named.
Civic officials said normally, the sweeping machines, procured by the MCG last year, clean the roads across the city between 10pm and 6am daily and they have a daily target to cover about 200km of roads.
These machines have been operational since August last year and, before that, the cleaning of roads was outsourced to a Delhi-based contractor who carried out the task with the help of three such machines as well as sanitation workers.
Municipal officials said most of the stretches are currently cleaned by the road sweeping machines while sanitation workers clean the internal roads and also lift horticulture waste, debris, and garbage from medians and roadsides. Other than the mechanised sweeping, all other sanitation activities are continuing as usual, officials said.
This is not the first time that MCG has defaulted on payments, causing services to be interrupted.
In August 2018, the mobile phones of all MCG officials and councillors were non-operational for more than seven hours as the civic body had failed to clear phone bills for two months, amounting to ₹11 lakh. The service was restored after the payments were made.
The operations of the sweeping machines came under scrutiny, earlier this year as well. In January, when chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar conducted surprise inspection at the MCG office, the roster and route details of these machines were noted as missing. A month later, senior MCG officials also conducted an inspection of these machines and found minor discrepancies with regard to designated routes.
