Govt mulls mechanical cleaning of city roads

GS Paul

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, September 22

To reduce pollution in the holy city, the state government has contemplated to introduce mechanical sweeping of streets and key roads to make these dust-free.

For the purpose, technical bid formalities were held yesterday in which four firms from Mumbai, Mohali, Samrala and Sangrur had shown interest to offer their services. The move will be in addition to the manual sweeping already been carried out, including the special night sanitation work in streets around the Golden Temple.

The mechanical sweeping project would cost around Rs 15 crore for a three-year contract. In the first stage, 23 roads will be taken up for cleaning, which will cost Rs 4.92 crore annually. Garbage lifting and other cleanliness will be carried out between 10 pm to 7 am.

Subsequently, 66 km and 357 km of roads inside and outside the walled city, respectively, will be brought under the mechanised cleaning.

Initially, the areas selected for mechanical cleaning would be around the Hall Gate, Ram Bagh, Gole Hatti chowk and Maha Singh Gate. All these passages lead to the Golden Temple. Areas around Durgiana Mandir, Jallianwala Bagh, elevated road on Amritsar-Jalandhar GT Road, Bhandari Bridge stretch and Civil line areas would be among the selected areas.

MC officials said mechanical cleaning would replace the manual cleaning and it would also bring qualitative difference.

They said around 78 per cent of the pollution was caused by vehicles, out of which 38 per cent was due to dust.

The mechanical sweeper fitted on a truck was equipped with three suction nozzles. It was also armed with three brushes — which were placed on the right, left and centre of the vehicle. By taking these steps, over 27 per cent air pollution could be decreased. Each machine was capable of removing about 7 tonnes of waste and dust in a day, the officials said.

Mayor Bakshi Ram Arora said the government was serious about the increasing level of dust in the city.

“We have designed a plan to decrease air pollution, as per which we will make all 48-km roads dust-free by mechanical cleaning initially. A daily nocturnal schedule is being worked out for the machine to operate. Recently, the Deputy Chief Minister had conducted a special meeting in Chandigarh. The tenders for the same will be open on October 5,” he said.