Surat: Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) has started a drive of identifying those throwing garbage in public through CCTV and penalizing them.

SMC started a cleaning drive across all the zones on 3rd December. A team of 10 persons has been deployed in the integrated command and control center for the last 2 days. They take photos and video of the people throwing garbage through a robust network of 2500 linked CCTV cameras and send the footage to the zone-level office to identify them. Total 124 people were identified in 2 days and penalized with Rs 2.84 lakh fines.

SMC has given the responsibility of the cleaning drive to the health department team and zonal chiefs across all the zones. The cleaning is done by making a zone-wise schedule. Total of 3000 metric tons of construction waste was discarded in the last 7 days. Total 500 slum pockets including 3 to 4 in each zone are covered in the cleaning drive in 10 days.

Surat municipal commissioner Shalini Agarwal stated that grass cutting and trimming were done in 80 thousand running meters in the last 10 days. She informed further that the target if fixed for the segregation of waste in the entire city in the upcoming 7 to 8 months.