Thiruvananthapuram: The Corporation owned garage at Fort in the state capital has turned into a graveyard of dumped vehicles with the authorities turning a blind eye.
Hundreds of vehicles owned by the civic body have literally turned into scrap because of apathy and neglect from the part of the authorities. The civic body owns around 227 vehicles and the majority of them are lying idle at the garage.
The local fund audit department has flayed the corporation for not auctioning unused vehicles. The audit report has exposed severe irregularities in the way the civic body is managing its assets.
The report observed that because of ill-management and apathy from the part of the authorities, the civic body is facing huge financial loss. As per the audit report, six pickup autos used for moving waste has gone missing. Interestingly, the officials haven’t filed a complaint with the police on the missing pickup autos.
According to officials, after the closure of the Vilappilsala waste treatment plant many of the vehicles were dumped at the garage. “After the introduction of source level waste management, we stopped using huge garbage trucks. Now we mostly use small pickup vehicles,” said an official.
The audit department has directed the authorities to include the vehicles in the asset register of the civic body. When asked Health standing committee chairman K Sreekumar said that the civic body is unable to auction many of the unused vehicles because of technical issues. “We have auctioned many vehicles in the past. We cannot simply auction all the vehicles at the garage. We have to ass-ess the age of the vehicles and the total number of kilometres covered by each to go for auction,” said Sreekumar.
