Following repeated public complaints about waste collection, North City Corporation Commissioner Pommala Sunil Kumar conducted a surprise inspection of auto merging points across the city on Thursday morning and found that attendance had been marked for several garbage collection autos that were not physically present at the designated locations.

The inspection also found a shortage of staff in many garbage vehicles, with several autos absent from their assigned routes. 

The surprise inspection was conducted at 5:45 a.m., with four teams deployed across the corporation limits to inspect auto merging points. The inspections were carried out at the waste collection point near Wheeler Road Flyover, KHB Colony in Ward 49, Banaswadi, and HBR Layout.

At the Wheeler Road Flyover merging point, officials found that while only 21 of the 32 assigned garbage collection autos were present, attendance records showed 24 vehicles as operational. Attendance had already been marked for seven vehicles before the Commissioner arrived.

In Ward 49 (Lingarajapura ward), only 10 of the 25 assigned autos were found at the location, even though attendance records showed that 23 vehicles were functioning. In Banaswadi, only 17 of the 35 assigned autos were present. Similarly, in HBR Layout, only 18 of the 31 assigned autos were found at the merging point.

The inspection also revealed that many autos across all these areas were operating without helper staff and that workers were not wearing safety gloves.

In several locations, fewer than half of the assigned vehicles were found to be present. Although attendance is required to be marked through a mobile application by scanning QR codes within a 150-metre radius of geo-mapped auto merging points, the officials found that attendance was being recorded even when vehicles had not reported to the designated locations.

The Commissioner directed the immediate removal of the ward marshals wherever serious lapses were found.