nagpur another major scam seems to have hit nagpur municipal corporation nmc the civic body will end up paying rs 756 crore in five years for use of a machine that costs just rs 7844 lakh also the civic body paying the contractor for sweeping 100 kms of roads a day with a single machine a near impossibility nmc roped in a private agency bengalurubased swachatha corporation to clean the city roads using the sweeping machine from november 1 2012 there was an immediate controversy following evasion of octroi by the company while bringing in the machine following tois expose of the evasion nmc seized the machine after a prolonged drama involving an office bearer of nmc and some political leaders and levied 10 times penalty in june the company accepted the penalty and paid half the amount the civic body released the machine and again engaged it for work after an assurance by the company to pay the remaining amount while paying octroi the agency declared the cost of the machine as rs 7844 lakh including customs duty and transportation charges from elgin city via mumbai to city toi has documents submitted with the nmc octroi department mentioning the actual cost of machine at rs 5942 lakh nmc health department officials told toi the company will be paid rs 140 crore per annum for cleaning the city streets for that money nmc could have bought two such machines every year also the figure of rs 14 crore was arrived at as per rate of rs 386 per km for cleaning 100 kms of roads a day these are sweeping cost standing committee approved charges for five years annually 8 hike will be allowed the machine has to sweep 100 km road every day which it is doing machine works on wardha road to kamptee road from airport square in southwest nagpur to automotive square in north nagpur machine it sweeps two lanes of the road from road divider on both sides and official claimed the agency has to bear the cost of diesel and two staffers to run it at this rate nmc will end up paying rs 756 crore justifying the contract deputy director health dr milind ganvir told toi machine was of foreignorigin and probably required high maintenance nmc got the machine to save the sanitary workers from mishaps while sweeping busy roads towards road divider it removes dust accumulated towards the road divider actually four more machines are required as city has around 1000 km roads with divider one machine can only do 100 km per day as it works only during the night he said interestingly nmc got the private agency by abandoning a similar old machine that it had bought