BMC withdraws new dumpers following complaints from workers

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has withdrawn a fleet of recently launched dumpers following complaints from sanitation workers. According to a Free Press Journal report, the staff had submitted written complaints to senior authorities. Lack of training and complicated process were cited as prime grievances in these letters. 

On August 1, the civic body had implemented the use of these dumpers to collect waste. These large-sized trucks collected garbage from specific areas of the city before being sent to the dumping ground. 

The corporation was renting the trucks from private contractors at a rate of Rs 4000 per shift, which was Rs 1000 less than the dumpers used previously. While the civic body benefitted in terms of cost incurred, the staff  struggled with the new machine. Many staffers complained that the trucks were time consuming. FPJ quoted a worker as saying, “Earlier, we used to work for six hours a day. Of this, garbage collection used to take hardly four to three hours and the rest time slot was consumed at the queue for dumping the waste at the dumping ground. Now, the new dumping vehicles take at least seven hours for us to collect the garbage, followed by nearly two to three hours in the queue to dump the garbage.”

Housing societies had also alleged that the huge size of these dumpers damaged many of their wheel-bins.

This led the BMC to withdraw the new dumpers after barely three months.