The Hindu 09.09.2016
Corporation plans vehicle tracking devices for lorries
Coimbatore Corporation will soon fix vehicle tracking system on all its
lorries to monitor movement and bring down fuel cost.— Photo: S. Siva
Saravanan
The Coimbatore Corporation has discovered that the
actual diesel consumption in lorries carrying waste to Vellalore is less
than what it is being billed for. The civic body made the discovery
when it carried a trial run fixing vehicle tracking devices on a few
lorries.
Sources privy to the operation say that
while the billing has touched 30 litres a day a lorry, the trial run has
shown that the actual consumption is almost half – around 15 litres a
day a lorry. The Corporation carried out the trial run by fixing the
tracking devices on five lorries – one each a zone – under the Central
Government’s Swachh Bharat scheme.
Corporation
Commissioner K. Vijayakarthikeyan says that he’s yet to see the report
on the result of the trial run exercise. But he is certain that there
will be reduction in diesel consumption if the civic body starts
monitoring the vehicle movement.
The
sources say that the savings will be massive given the fact that the
Corporation alone operates close to 200 lorries a day moving nearly 800
tonnes waste to Vellalore. If each lorry’s diesel consumption were to
come down from 30 litres to around 15 litres a day, the expenditure will
also get halved.
The Corporation started off the
vehicle tracking exercise by entering into an agreement with Bharat
Sanchar Nigam Limited. The latter will provide the SIM and also the
tracking equipment. The Corporation will monitor the vehicle movement at
its main office in Town Hall.
If the Corporation
were to fix the tracking device on all its lorries, save on diesel and
tighten the purse, it will be doing so at a time when it is finding it
difficult to pay contractors for works that were executed months ago.