Ludhiana: 80 MC garbage vehicles untraced, fresh sanitation buys raise questions

Residents and activist question expansion of sanitation fleet as civic body yet to fix accountability for untraced GPS-fitted e-rickshaws

Even as 80 GPS-enabled e-rickshaws meant for dry waste collection remain untraced months after the issue was flagged by a legislative committee, the municipal corporation has gone ahead with purchasing 800 wooden cycle-carts for garbage lifting and sanitation work across the city, raising fresh questions over planning and accountability.

Some of the wooden cycle carts recently purchased by the civic body in Ludhiana. (Manish/HT)

Civic body officials confirmed that around 25 cycle-carts have already been procured, while the remaining will be delivered in phases over the next few days.

Residents and activists have questioned the decision to spend fresh public money when responsibility for the missing e-rickshaws is yet to be fixed.

The issue of missing vehicles came to light during an inspection by the Punjab vidhan sabha’s committee on local bodies at the MC’s central workshop on Hambran Road on February 21 this year. The committee found that 80 of the 350 e-rickshaws distributed to sanitation workers under the 15th Finance Commission grant in 2023 were missing from both official records and the ground.

The e-rickshaws, procured at a cost of ₹9.36 crore, were fitted with GPS devices worth another ₹10 lakh to enable real-time monitoring. However, officials have so far failed to explain how GPS-fitted vehicles went off the radar.

Later, an internal civic body report stated that only 270 vehicles have been traced across different zones so far. While civic body officials maintain that “a number of the earlier missing vehicles have now been located, though a few are still left to be traced”, residents point out that the matter has dragged on for months without a clear conclusion or accountability.

“This is taxpayers’ money,” said Rajinder Kaur, a resident of New Madhopuri. “Instead of completing the inquiry and recovering all vehicles, the MC keeps making new purchases. People want to know who is responsible and what action has been taken.”

Kuldeep Khaira, a member of the Public Action Committee, said the fresh purchase of 800 wooden cycle-carts had again exposed weak record-keeping within the civic body. “First crores were spent on e-rickshaws. Now hundreds of cycle-carts are being bought while the earlier vehicles are still unaccounted for. Unless monitoring improves, new assets may also disappear or lie unused,” he warned.

Residents have also questioned why GPS tracking records have not been made public, despite the system being installed specifically to ensure transparency and control. They have demanded a time-bound probe, fixing of responsibility on officials or contractors, recovery of the missing vehicles, and an independent audit of all sanitation-related purchases.

Calls made to MC commissioner Aaditya Dachalwal for comment went unanswered.