Bengaluru : Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) is all set to put up over 1,000 CCTVs in the city to monitor reckless garbage disposal by citizens and keep a check on black spots that are piling up along roads.
Now that segregation of waste at source has been made mandatory and the civic body is not collecting mixed waste, officials are concerned that history will repeat itself: in the past, when segregation at source was enforced, people started dumping household waste on roads, and black spots started rising. The hope is that CCTVs at key spots will help the civic body monitor habitual offenders and act as a deterrent. The cameras will be installed by March-end.
BBMP has already conducted a survey and identified over 450 black spots and 600 mustering points (spots where garbage collected in autos are transferred into large compactors.). More often than not, mustering points usually turn into black spots.“Of the 450 black spots identified over 300 are in the core zones of the city and have been there from a long time. In the outer zones, we have identified nearly 150 persistent black spots, which we will cover with CCTV cameras,” said Sarfaraz Khan, Joint Commissioner, Solid Waste Management, BBMP.
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Ramprasad, an activist working in the sector, said that identifying the points to put up these CCTV cameras was very crucial and the local councillors shouldn’t be allowed to exert control over the choice of these strategic points. “Its a huge investment the city is making and wrong choice of strategic points will sabotage the exercise,” he said.
However, Mr. Khan pointed out that going by past experience, putting up CCTV cameras at notorious black spots will only lead to it shifting to another point. “We want to keep the location of these cameras dynamic,” he said. The CCTV cameras will be linked to the Traffic Management Centre of the city police for live monitoring.