Team Blitz India
MUMBAI: In the past five months, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has swooped on polluters, slapping 3,498 notices and imposing penalties of more than Rs 1 crore.
Starting November 2023, the action was taken under ‘Swachh Angan’ (clean premises) initiative till this month. It aims at preventing burning of waste and dumping of construction and demolition debris on the roadside.
BMC started cracking down on those violating the cleanliness and sanitation bylaws, 2006 after the city’s air quality went on a downward spiral last year. As per rules, the offenders, either owner or tenant of the premises, have been fined in the range of Rs1,000 to Rs10,000.
As per official data, BMC slapped penalties on 2,282 defaulters under ‘Swachh Angan’ initiative in the past five months, recovering a penalty of Rs 55.92 lakh.
The second-highest number of complaints were against illegal dumping of construction and demolition debris. The civic body collected Rs 42.54 lakh in 715 cases during this period.
“The BMC has a debris on-call service for lifting and disposing construction waste up to 300 metric tonne at nominal charges. Still, several cases of dumping debris on roads were registered in the civic wards. Preventing such incidents has been a challenge because the rubble is dumped at public places mostly at night”, according to officials.
The BMC has also acted against contractors for not covering dumpers carrying construction and demolition materials with tarpaulin, and burning garbage. Maximum cases related to air pollution were registered in wards – H West (Bandra West to Santacruz West) and H East (Khar East to Bandra East).
