On the first day of Ganeshotsav, a total of 4,353 violators were fined in Mumbai for not covering their faces in public spaces on Friday. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has collected Rs 8.70 lakh as fines from the violators on Friday.
According to senior BMC officials of the solid waste management (SWM) department, more than 60 per cent of the total violators were fined in areas that have maximum number of open spaces like parks, beaches and gardens. The BMC officials have said that owing to the ongoing festive season, the numbers of marshals deployed in these areas have also been increased.
"Friday was a holiday, still the number of violators fined in a single day surged to more than 4,000. This clearly states that many people are still not following the Covid appropriate behaviour," said the official.
The official maintained that earlier this week a high-level meeting was conducted where the ward officials had been instructed to increase the number of marshals at their wards.
"The maximum number of violators were fined in areas like K/West (Juhu, Andheri west) and H/West (Bandra west, Khar) where there are more open spaces. However, in commercial areas like Colaba and Nariman Point, the footfall of violators were comparatively low," the official said.
After the lockdown restrictions were lifted and till early this week, the BMC had been fining 4,000-4,500 violators daily on average.
Besides the BMC, the Mumbai Police has also fined 5,762 violators on Friday and collected around Rs 11.52 lakh as fines. Overall a total of Rs 20.23 lakh were collected on Friday.
