Chennai: Greater Chennai Corporation plans to install artificial intelligence-enabled CCTV cameras to monitor garbage dumping across the city. The cameras would be programmed to track people dumping debris and alert the GCC's control room immediately. They can also emit beeps and scare off people who dump waste in the open.
GCC commissioner J Kumaragurubaran said the cameras would track overflowing garbage in the first phase."When garbage bins overflow and spill on to the road, conservancy inspectors will get an SMS. We will also get a live feed in our control room," he said.
The cameras have features such as trespass detection, loiter detection, and crowding too, and can send real-time inputs.
"We have at least four garbage dumping hotspots per ward, totalling a thousand hotspots in the city," the commissioner said. GCC plans to cover at least 300 hotspots in the first phase.
The commissioner said the problems are largely are in zones handled by GCC Tondiarpet, Royapuram, Thiru Vi Ka Nagar, Ambattur, and Anna Nagar. "In zones handled by private firms, we put pressure on the contractors, but in GCC zones, there's a laxity." Through recently launched POS devices, GCC has collected 25.73 lakh in fines so far for littering in public places. The highest of 9.06 lakh was collected from the central zone, followed by 9.03 lakh from the north zone and 7.6 lakh from the south zone.
The highest among the individual zones was from Kodambakkam Zone, where 3.19 lakh was collected.
G Suresh Kumar of Mogappair's Golden George Nagar said the garbage corners are mostly created by the corporation. "They don't clear waste from their resource recovery centres, placed on roadsides. The waste accumulates for two or three days," he said, pointing to the GG Nagar-Cooum side. GCC must deploy more resources to transport waste from the common bins to the segregation unit, he added.