Friday, 21 July 2023 | PURNIMA BISHT | DEHRADUN
Public money has gone down the drain with 25,000 QR codes which were installed by Dehradun Smart City Limited (DSCL) to improve the efficiency of waste management have proved to be redundant. These codes are still waiting to be scanned by sanitation workers since their installation about three years ago. The project is still in its dormancy as neither DSCL nor the Municipal Corporation of Dehradun (MCD) seems to have a clue about these QR codes. The project is presently hanging in the balance due to the blame game of both bodies.
The DSCL started installing these codes in some wards of the city including Kishannagar, Bhagat Singh Colony and Ballupur among others in March 2021 as a pilot project. A helpline number was also provided in the QR code for the general public to complain or give feedback regarding the garbage collection services in their respective area. The QR codes were linked with the Doon Integrated Command and Control Centre (DICCC) to enable the centre to monitor the movement of garbage collecting vehicles to ensure waste is being collected from every house. Sanitation workers were also given training to operate the device properly for scanning the codes every day to keep a record of their movement. The DSCL spent about Rs 60 lakhs on the installation of these codes but they remain unused since then.
Some sanitation workers initially scanned the codes but they eventually stopped claiming it to be a time consuming task that lengthens the garbage collection process. They claimed that a separate person will be required to scan the codes but it will still take a considerable amount of time, as stated by the municipal officials. Considering this, the MCD purportedly asked DSCL officials to use a technology like Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) for automatic detection of the QR codes every time the vehicles go for door to door collection.
However, no such development has taken place so far. Talking about the failure of these QR code installations, an official from DSCL stated that the DSCL was responsible only for the installation of codes but MCD was responsible to use them to improve sanitation management in the city. “We recently bought some garbage vehicles for MCD too but how they use it is their own task. We just facilitated the resources. Similarly, our role was limited to the installation of QR codes but how to utilise them properly is the corporation’s job,” said the official.
However, a senior municipal officer said that DSCL installed these codes without any proper coordination with MCD. “The installation was done without considering any practical approach to how thousands of codes will be scanned every day by limited sanitation workers. The MCD is currently working on tracking the movement of garbage collecting vehicles via GPS. Currently, there is no use of these QR codes for us,” said the official.
