‘New vacuum cleaning machines not before April’

New Delhi: No new vacuum cleaning machines to clean the dust off Delhi roads will be added before April.

The first set of six machines was introduced in April last year but they were returned after six months. In November last year, when pollution levels spiked, deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia had promised that every major road will be vacuumed every week.

However since then, the Public Works Department (PWD) is operating only four hired machines for over 1,200 km of roads, under the jurisdiction of the department.

As of now, only a handful of machines are being cleaned. And if the government officials are to be believed, no new machines will be added before April this year.

The main hurdle in getting the machines is the lack of bidders. According to officials, this is due to two reasons: the concept is relatively new in India and the conditions of the tender. Till now the government has only invited tenders for shorter periods, like four to six months.

“The bidders don’t show interest if the period is that small as they think it’s not profitable for them. So, this time, new tender will be issued for three or four years. We hope to get more bidders. But the process will take some time and we can’t get more machines before April,” said a PWD official.

The government is also considering buying its own machines rather than hiring them. For this time, the new tender will be for both procurement and hiring, the official said.

A study by IIT on concentration of pollutants in Delhi’s air said that 38 per cent of particulate matter (PM) 2.5 and 56 per cent of PM 10 is because of road dust.

The National Green Tribunal, in its order in November last year, had said that manual cleaning of roads should be stopped immediately as it only regenerates pollution in the environment.