Kalamassery waste raises audit stink

KOCHI: The Kalamasserry municipality has been pulled up by the local fund audit department for not maintaining  proper data of the quantity of the solid wastes transported to the Brahmapuram waste treatment plant for the financial year 2015-16. The audit report has also pointed out that the civic body has not kept a proper record of the daily expenditure paid to  the person entrusted with the transportation of the waste.

The municipality has been paying transportation charges of Rs 1 per kg of solid waste per day to the Kochi corporation for sending it to the plant at Brahmapuram. But the civic body does not have  any receipt of the total quantity of the wastes removed each day, the audit report said. The details of the computerised weighing bridges have not been submitted by the municipality along with the vouchers for the payment, it said. In  2015-16, the municipality had  paid Rs 56.03 lakh for the transportation of the solid waste to the plant. It  has also been paying Rs 3,000 per day to a person identified as Sakeer Babu as transportation charges.

The total outflow on this score has been placed at Rs 14.18 lakh.   According to the rules, the local body should have a computerised weighing bridge recording the date,  quantity of waste,  vehicle number and the time of the departure of the vehicles. These records have to be signed by the health inspector. Since these details were not submitted with the payment bills,  the auditors were unable to verify the claims of the receipts received from the Kochi Corporation. “There is no record on how much quantity of waste has been taken out from the local body to Brahmapuram. This is not acceptable to the auditors”, it said.