Mumbai: Digital fines won’t curb corruption, say citizens

The clean-up marshals issuing fines to people in A Ward

After two years, clean-up marshals are back on the streets to take punitive action against violators. This time they are using a digital system to avoid any confusion, but citizens are sceptical about their role in keeping the city clean. It has been almost a month since the clean-up marshals resumed their duties in the city. However, as the digital payment system wasn't ready, they were assigned only awareness duties. From Tuesday, the BMC started a pilot project in A Ward - Nariman Point, Colaba, Churchgate, and the Fort area.

During their earlier stint, clean-up marshals faced allegations of accepting cash fines without issuing receipts, prompting the BMC to introduce a digital payment system for fine collection to ensure transparency. Now, the BMC has given Bluetooth-connected handheld printers to marshals who will give printed receipts through a mobile app instead of handwritten receipts. The option of paying the fine online has also been made available to citizens.

The digitally printed receipt

"It is an effective way to ensure citizens don't litter. Hope it works," said Rahul Kadri, chairman of Nepean Sea Road Citizens Forum and architect-urban planner. Shaikh Faiyaz Alam, convener of the Govandi Citizens Welfare Forum, said, "Clean-up marshals using the app would be successful in combating corruption and extortion because it would replace traditional offline methods of manually collecting fines from workers who cross their jurisdiction to impose penalties. It would also stop workers from abusing their power to impose penalties. Since this is a contemporary digital monitoring and geotagging technology, it will undoubtedly be successful."

However, not all are in favour of digital payment. "How does the digital penalty system help in avoiding corruption? A bribe could be taken for not taking digital payment. To stop corruption, a body web live camera connected to the control room is more helpful so that it could be seen and recorded," said Jitendra Gupta, an activist from Kurla.

Additional Municipal Commissioner (Western Suburbs) Sudhakar Shinde said that there are 700 marshals, an average of 30 per ward, already deployed. The Information Technology department of the corporation has created a mobile app, and the training workshop for marshals was conducted on March 26. The receipt given to citizens will have the symbol of the municipal corporation and the receipt number. The name of the municipal department, date, time, and latitude of the place where the action was taken will also be along these lines. So, there will be no room for manipulation in the receipt.

"Still, corruption will continue. Earlier they used to grab only poor, confused, new people in the city. And now they will take less money and allow people to go without a digital receipt. There are many ways to be corrupt," said Vishwas Kambale from Kurla. Marshals are responsible for penalising individuals for various offences, ranging from spitting and littering to waste dumping and not picking up pets' waste. Fines range between Rs 100 and Rs 1,000.

Fines

Defecating in the open Rs 100
Littering public place Rs 200
Littering by pets -
Pet-owner to be fined Rs 500

2 yrs
No. of years marshals were missing from city streets