After a long hiatus, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has again appointed clean up marshals in the city to keep the roads pristine here.
These new marshals have been appointed in all the 24 administrative wards across Mumbai to fine people found spitting, littering or dumping debris in public places.
A senior official stated that since there is no other way to stop people littering and spitting in public places, the civic body is left with no option than hiring clean up marshals. Each agency, appointed in the respective ward, has been tasked to appoint 30 marshals. They will have to get police verification of all marshals in a period of one month given to them.
The contract will be awarded for a year. Also the agencies will be monitored and fined for flouting norms, official added.
According to reports, the earlier contract with the agencies for deploying clean-up marshals ended in March this year.
Apart from this, during COVID-19, the clean- up marshals were given responsibility to penalise the people found without masks. However, there were several complaints of marshals harassing people and extorting money from them.
The marshals fined 35 lakh citizens and collected fines of INR 80 crores in two years.
For those unversed, in 2007, the BMC first appointed clean-up marshals. But, the civic authorities have many times received complaints from the citizens about marshals misbehaving with them. So on the demand from corporators, the marshals were discontinued in 2011. But, the BMC could not find any other active medium to take action against errants, so the marshals were rehired in 2016.
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