Chennai: Public can monitor garbage vehicles

Chennai: Making people stakeholders in clearing garbage from the streets of the city, the Greater Chennai Corporation has made residents a part of its fleet monitoring system.

The civic body recently made the real-time ‘vehicle march out’ data public. “Persons who want to check whether all the garbage vehicles are marched out to perform their ‘duty’ or not can visit Chennai Corporation web portal and check the real-time status of fleet movement,” a Chennai Corporation official said.

According to Chennai Corporation data, the civic body has been operating more than 500 garbage vehicles including HMV compactors, LMV compactors, tipper lorries and others. The Chennai Corporation also maintains tri-cycles to ensure door-to-door garbage collection. The civic body is now collecting nearly 5,500 tonnes of wastes daily.

“All the garbage vehicles maintained by the corporation are retrofitted with GPS tracking devices. The facilities are made at the corporation control room to monitor the real-time data of plying of garbage vehicles. We can pinpoint the location and routes of a particular vehicle using the satellite-assisted GPS tracker,” the official added.

The official also said the new link given on the website would help the public to make complaints. “Although the public cannot see the location of the vehicles, they can monitor the number of the vehicles marched out to collect garbage. They can see shift-wise march out vehicles,” he said.

According to the official, the Chennai Corporation has made the arrangement with the intent of including citizen participation in effective monitoring of garbage clearance in the city. “Residents can send complaints to civic officials if found vehicles fail to march out of duty,” the official added.