After a hiatus of two years, clean-up marshals hit the streets on Tuesday with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) launching them on a pilot basis in the city’s A ward, which comprises Churchgate, Colaba and Navy Nagar among others. This time, the clean-up marshals have been equipped with an app, which will be used to levy fines up to Rs 1,000 on violators, including people caught spitting, littering, urinating or defecating in public etc. In a bid to maintain cleanliness across the city, the civic body is slated to press up to 750 clean-up marshals: 30 marshals will be deployed in each ward. According to senior civic officials, the marshals will penalise offenders through the app to maintain accountability and transparency in the fines levied. “Earlier, the marshals would issue handwritten receipts to violators and there were reports of many cases where the marshals would demand much higher fines than the actual amount. In a bid to avoid this, we have now launched this app for the marshals. Now the receipt of the fine will be generated within the app itself and the marshals will also be provided with a small printer, which will enable them to print the receipt,” a senior official told The Indian Express. Marshals were first introduced in Mumbai in 2007 and since April 2022, the city has been running without any clean-up marshal as the contract of the private agency that provided the manpower lapsed in March 2022. According to officials, this time fines between Rs 100 and Rs 1,000 will be levied on people who are found guilty of violating hygiene in public places. “While those who want to pay the fine in cash can do so, the receipt of the fine will also have a QR code, enabling the violators to make digital payments,” said a BMC official. The receipt of the fine will also comprise BMC’s insignia, alongside the date, time as well as the area where the fine was imposed. While the civic body had announced its plans to reintroduce the marshals in the city in November last year, the project had been stuck in limbo owing to technical issues during the testing of the app. Speaking to The Indian Express, Sudhakar Shinde, additional municipal commissioner who heads the solid waste management (SWM) department in BMC, said the marshals using the app will be introduced on a pilot basis in A ward and C ward. While the clean-up marshals made their comeback in A ward’s streets on Tuesday, the civic body is eyeing to introduce the marshals across all the other 23 wards of the city. “While each ward will have 30 marshals, in some wards which have larger footfall including popular tourist destinations and important terminuses, we will be deploying between 40-50 marshals. The app will also have a geo-tagging feature to ensure that marshals do not cross their designated areas,” a BMC official added.
