Three dust-sweeping machines catching dust for past 3 months!

Aurangabad, July 31:

The Aurangabad Smart City Development Corporation Limited (ASCDCL) has purchased three mini-size dust sweeping machines for Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), by spending around Rs 1 crore, under Smart City Project. The successful demonstration was held in May and since then these jeep-mounted machines are lying unused under the shed of AMC's mechanical section at the old Central Octroi Checkpost. The citizens have hardly seen the machines cleaning any important road in the past three months!

As reported earlier, the machines were bought to clean 52 important roads of length 100 kms. The cost of each machine is Rs 32 lakh and is bought from an Ahmedabad-based company. Earlier, the guardian minister Subhash Desai inaugurated them and later on, the public representatives dedicated it. These single-engine vehicles are used for the operation of sweeping brushes and vacuum, while the cleaning brushes in the sides and the centre gather the dust, which is then absorbed into the pipe through the vacuum. It may be noted that the AMC is having one big truck mounted sweeping machine for cleaning important wide roads, however, the civic body was not having the machines to clean the narrow roads.

When inquired the executive engineer (mechanical section) Devidas Pandit underlined, " Many problems emerge while cleaning the wet roads during monsoon. The functioning of the machine is effective on dry roads. Hence it would be used when there are no rains."

Features of mini-machine

The machines with a sweeping width of 5.25 feet can sweep the road dust at the speed of 2 to 3 kilometres per hour. The machines have a dust container capacity of 1.4 cubic metres and a tipping angle of 45 degrees. Each machine has the capacity to sweep 10 to 15 kilometres of roads every day.