BBMP loses Rs 50k monthly at biomethanation plant

By Y. Maheswara Reddr | NT

Bengaluru: The BBMP always spends taxpayer money with a free hand. One example of wasteful expenditure is the Rs 1.36 lakh spent on the maintenance of a biomethanation plant at Freedom Park. The plant is underutilised and only produces about six kilowatts of electricity to light some lamps at the park. With a 30 kilowatt capacity, the plant can be used to power streetlights around Freedom Park in Gandhinagar but there is no facility to utilise this electricity.

Six kilowatts costs around Rs 420. The cost of electricity supplied to Freedom Park for 30 days is around Rs 12,600 (420x30). The BBMP loses Rs 50,400 per month due to the under-utilised biomethanation plant, which was constructed at a cost of Rs 79 lakh. It was maintained by Mailhem Engineers Private Ltd.

“There was a proposal to supply electricity to street lights but nothing has been done to complete the tender process for installing new street lights,’’ said Mailhem Engineers Private Limited branch manager Ramgopal Rao. The BBMP had announced a plan to light up around 1000 street lights in Gandhinagar in 2015 but nothing has been done yet. The solid waste management department was assigned to supply waste collected from hotels. “Hotels have been closed for the last year so we were dependent on cow dung, which we collect from Chamarajpet, Cottonpet and Chickpet,” said a BBMP assistant engineer.

The biomethanation plant at Freedom Park was set up in 2014 and began functioning in 2015 for three years. “It was shut down for one year (2018) due to the delay in renewing the contract,’’ said Ramgopal Rao.