MC to buy four road sweeping machines

Sukhmeet Bhasin

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Tribune News Service

Bathinda, October 1

The Municipal Corporation of Bathinda has made a plan to purchase four new road sweeping machines at a cost of Rs 1 crore. At present, they have four such machines, but the civic body needs more.

In the proposal, the MCB has stated that in the Swachhta Survey 2018, Bathinda got the first rank in the state and the civic body was declared the first ODF MC in the state.

“To maintain this ranking and for the star rating for garbage-free cities, we need to purchase four sweeping machines for cleaning of roads,” MCB officials said.

It is stated that at present there are around 400 km 20-ft wide roads in the city and for cleaning these roads, the MCB requires sweeping machines which would work in two shifts and these would clean 100-km per machine.

The funds for three machines out of four would be made available by Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal while one machine would be purchased by the MCB on its own. The proposal was approved by the MCB in its recently held general house meeting.

The main motive behind purchasing the machines is to mechanise the sanitation work and reduce dependency on labourers and workers.

Finance Minister Manpreet Badal’s wife Veenu Badal said, “We are brining four vacuum machines, which would clean the roads in the city. We are trying to make Bathinda cleaner and greener.”

In 2008, the Bathinda Improvement Trust had purchased a vacuum cleaner machine after which the MCB had purchased three more machines, each costing around Rs 12.65 lakh, from a Sangrur-based manufacturer.

Samrala-based Pyare Lal and his son, a contractor, had been hired by the MCB to operate these three sweeping machines in the city.