BMC spends ₹45,000 daily to clean Malad’s 7 beaches
BMC spends ₹45,000 daily to clean Malad's 7 beaches. Aksa most popular, but plagued by littering and drownings. Dana Pani and Marve face garbage issues too
Mumbai: The seven beaches dotting the coast of Malad -- Aksa, Marve, Dana Pani, Madh, Erangal, Silver and Bhati – together stitch a shoreline of measuring 8 kilometers. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) deploys heavy-weight beach cleaning machinery and manpower of 20 every day to keep them clean. It spends ₹45,000 each day for the purpose; and the regimen will continue till the six-year tender with the contractor Rakshit Infrastructure expires in April, 2027.
And yet despite its efforts, there’s scope for improvement.
The most popular of the seven – Aksa – gets a footfall of 5000 on weekends; and unlike the six others, apart from the refuse that the sea throws up during high tide, Aksa is also plagued by littering. Disregarding BMC’s endeavours to keep the beach free of filth at all times, Nimesh Somaiya, who owns a cinema hall, who has been visiting the beach for 20 years, said: “While it remains clean through the week, over weekends visitors leave behind a lot of trash, which is visible to us on Mondays.”
Aksa is also infamous for incidents of drowning — from 2006 to 2018, an average of 38 people drowned annually. The beach was shut many times recently because of high tides during the heavy downpour. “Uncaring of consequences, people go straight for a dip, so we have to be very cautious. We keep it shut as a precaution during turbulent waves and close it by 8pm,” said Akshay Meher, a lifeguard on the beach. Seven lifeguards are deployed in shifts.
When Aksa is inaccessible, the merry-makers turn to Dana Pani beach. “Dana Pani lies on a curve and hence receives more garbage from the sea than Aksa,” said Nelson Patel, a resident who lives close to Aksa and Marve beaches. “And since it is rockier, BMC’s machines cannot clean the beach properly.”
Marve is next on the popularity chart, as thousands of visitors arrive here to access the jetty from where they ferry into Manori. Part of the beach is barred by navy personnel, giving visitors access to only a small portion. Here, a mix of the sea’s garbage, littering and fishing scraps add to the waste. “The beach is cleaned once for an hour in the morning and also during festivals, which isn’t adequate. For most part, the cleaning is done manually,” said Patel.
“While the beach gets cleaned every morning, filth gathers during the rains, which is compounded by the waste left behind by the fishermen, especially in the month of August when fishermen begin their trade,” said Nikhil Desai, who runs a snack stall that was set up by his father in the 1990s.
When HT was at the spot, fisherman Devendra Koli was busy sorting through the catch he had netted that morning. While he loaded the little fish in the baskets, he dumped the garbage that came along in a pile on the beach. “This trash is going to return to the beach anyway, either by high tide or us,” he said, pinning the blame on proliferation of plastic garbage which “hinder fishermen’s work”. “Small pieces of plastic get shredded in the sea and it is a laborious task to separate the small fish from bits of plastic to earn a livelihood,” he said.
The other beaches -- Erangal, Madh, Bhati and Silver – are mostly used by the fisher folk, although joggers are known to frequent Silver beach given its soft sand.
BMC is quick to put the blame of the filth on these beaches on the fishermen. “Soon after they get their catch, they dispose the garbage like plastic, bottles, pieces of wood on the shore,” said an official from the P-North ward.
In a counter argument, Dhananjay Koli, president of the Mumbai Macchimar Congress, said: “We do not bring any extra garbage on the beach, except those that are swept up by the high tide. This garbage comes from the BMC’s poor garbage management system, and the dumping along the coast and in the nallahs.” Koli complained that few people are seen cleaning up Erangal where some tourists visit, while the others are ignored by the civic body. “They never get the machines here, despite many complains from us.”
While BMC appointed Rakshit Infrastructure to clean the beaches at a cost of ₹10.16 crore for six years from 2021, it has increased the kitty each year to factor in inflation. This year for example, BMC has been spending ₹45,000 per day to clean the beaches, which equals to ₹1.62 crore for 2024.
In the wet season, it collects 6 to 7 metric tonnes of garbage each day in the wet season and 3 to 3.5 metric tonnes in the dry season.