MCD micro-chips bunking bulls

Chew on this — the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) will spend close to Rs four lakh to install microchips inside the stomachs of bulls bunking duty, reports Neelam Pandey.

Chew on this — the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) will spend close to Rs four lakh to install microchips inside the stomachs of bulls bunking duty.

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Earlier the civic body had successfully brought down absenteeism among its employees by installing biometric machines at Town Hall, the civic body headquarters.

MCD commissioner KS Mehra floated the micro-chipping idea for the bovines on Wednesday.

The MCD hires 883 carts, each pulled by a bull, on 89-day contracts in East Delhi’s Shahdara south and north zones. These carts are used to ferry silt and garbage to landfill sites. Recently, there has been a rise in the number of complaints about cart owners playing truant despite pocketing Rs 175 every time they visited a site.

The MCD standing committee met on Wednesday to address the issue.

One councillor even suggested a bull race from Delhi to Ghaziabad to resolve the problem. “We don’t even know whether the 883 bulls on MCD rolls are actually there. Let us organise a race for a fresh horn-count,” Paharganj councillor Sunil Kakkar had said.

The chip would contain exhaustive details on the animal, its owner and would use global positioning system technology to trace the bull’s whereabouts.