Around 200 steel dustbins that the Patna Municipal Corporation had installed during the 2016 and 2017 Prakash Utsav celebrations have been stolen, deputy municipal commissioner Vishal Anand confirmed on Sunday.

Vishal said 200 of the 800 dustbins are missing and the corporation got wind of it only recently after civic officials and ward councillors pointed out.

While Vishal could not comment on the expenditure incurred in buying the dustbins, Gaya district magistrate (DM) and former PMC commissioner Abhishek Singh, during whose tenure the dustbins were installed, said each dustbin costs Rs 9,000, including installation.

“Each dustbin, called litter bins, has a 100 litre capacity. They were easy targets for thieves because they were small unlike the big dustbins which have capacities are either 1.1 cubic metre or 2.5 cubic metre, making it harder to lift or steal easily,” said Vishal.

Terming the theft unfortunate, he added: “This city does not belong to the municipal corporation only or to some individual. The city belongs to residents. Citizens and the corporation both are stakeholders. We all have a responsibility towards maintaining the city and keeping it beautiful. On one hand, the corporation is trying to provide facilities and on the other hand, people are stealing civic property.”

Vishal said 200 similar dustbins had been brought for the Bankipore circle of PMC and they will be installed at various points in the circle.

Asked about the stolen bins, mayor Sita Sahu said she would get the matter investigated.

“The matter has come to my notice recently. We can’t consider nabbing the culprits by checking the CCTV footage because the timeline could have elapsed,” she said.

Abhishek said he wouldn’t comment as he was no more at the helm of the PMC but said the theft should not have occurred.

Missing dustbins outside Gandhi Maidan near JP Golambar. Picture by Manoj Kumar

Removal decision

“A decision has been taken to remove big dustbins from major roads, including Bailey Road, Boring Road, Ashok Rajpath, Exhibition Road, SP Verma Road and others as we have now realised that by placing these dustbins on major roads, we had created garbage points,” said Vishal, the deputy municipal commissioner.

He added: “Now that the door-to-door garbage collection programme has been rolled out, there is no need of keeping dustbins everywhere because on a daily basis we are managing garbage from the source itself (from people’s doorstep). The decision of removing big dustbins from major roads have also been taken to ease traffic as the large-capacity dustbins were a hindrance to the traffic system.”