The map will mark out the exact stretch of road or blocks that a sweeper or a garbage collector
is supposed to clean. It means the jobs won’t be decided in a haphazard
manner but will be more regimental, helping rap the sloppy hands.

It is one of the measures that corporation commissioner D Karthikeyan
has implemented to address the complaints from residents across the city
on garbage pile-up.

It had been decided earlier that a
conservancy worker would be given a particular stretch of 500 metres,
where the worker is expected to do sweep or collect garbage from
door-to-door on a tricycle. “The working model has already been in
place. But since, problems persist, we have asked engineers to rework
the ward maps,” said corporation commissioner D Karthikeyan.The SMS system to monitor daily garbage collection, a brainchild of former commissioner PWC Davidar, has also been revived.

When the workers are done with their stretch, they will report to the
conservancy inspector, who will in turn send a job-done text message
when his zone is swept clean. When conservancy job in all the wards in a
zone is completed for the day, the assistant commissioner will send a
message to the common number.The new system will also make it
easier for residents to get their complaints addressed since the workers
aren’t shuffled often.

The corporation is also studying if
they can hire private lorries to cart out garbage from areas that do not
have garbage collection points. The lorries could be used to empty
garbage from the tricycles in an area. “Workers empty their tricycles in
street corners when they did not have collection points. Shortage of
trucks was creating delays in clearing the streets regularly,” said a
corporation official.

Zonal commissioners and engineers have
been asked to recruit more workers to tide over staff shortage, which
has been one of the reasons for poor conservancy operations in north and
central Chennai. “We have decided to recruit 2,000 more people. In the
zone, locals will be recruited so that they will not find it tough to
report to work,” said the official.The civic body has also decided to buy 2,000 new garbage bins and 500 new tricycles for zones across the city.