After a hiatus of two years, clean-up marshals hit the streets on Tuesday with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Company (BMC) launching them on a pilot foundation within the metropolis’s A ward, which includes Churchgate, Colaba and Navy Nagar amongst others. This time, the clean-up marshals have been outfitted with an app, which can be used to levy fines as much as Rs 1,000 on violators, together with folks caught spitting, littering, urinating or defecating in public and so on.
In a bid to keep up cleanliness throughout town, the civic physique is slated to press as much as 750 clean-up marshals: 30 marshals can be deployed in every ward. Based on senior civic officers, the marshals will penalise offenders by way of the app to keep up accountability and transparency within the fines levied.
“Earlier, the marshals would situation handwritten receipts to violators and there have been stories of many instances the place the marshals would demand a lot greater fines than the precise quantity. In a bid to keep away from this, we’ve got now launched this app for the marshals. Now the receipt of the tremendous can be generated throughout the app itself and the marshals can even be supplied with a small printer, which is able to allow them to print the receipt,” a senior official advised The Indian Express.
Marshals had been first launched in Mumbai in 2007 and since April 2022, town has been working with none clean-up marshal because the contract of the personal company that offered the manpower lapsed in March 2022.
Based on officers, this time fines between Rs 100 and Rs 1,000 can be levied on people who find themselves discovered responsible of violating hygiene in public locations. “Whereas those that wish to pay the tremendous in money can achieve this, the receipt of the tremendous can even have a QR code, enabling the violators to make digital funds,” mentioned a BMC official.
The receipt of the tremendous can even comprise BMC’s insignia, alongside the date, time in addition to the world the place the tremendous was imposed.
Whereas the civic physique had introduced its plans to reintroduce the marshals within the metropolis in November final 12 months, the undertaking had been caught in limbo owing to technical points throughout the testing of the app.
Chatting with The Indian Specific, Sudhakar Shinde, further municipal commissioner who heads the stable waste administration (SWM) division in BMC, mentioned the marshals utilizing the app can be launched on a pilot foundation in A ward and C ward.
Whereas the clean-up marshals made their comeback in A ward’s streets on Tuesday, the civic physique is eyeing to introduce the marshals throughout all the opposite 23 wards of town. “Whereas every ward can have 30 marshals, in some wards which have bigger footfall together with common vacationer locations and necessary terminuses, we can be deploying between 40-50 marshals. The app can even have a geo-tagging characteristic to make sure that marshals don’t cross their designated areas,” a BMC official added.