Services like waste management, street lighting and pavement maintenance are greatly hampered due to shortage of vehicles, different DCC sources said.

They said corruption, mishandling and mismanagement in the DCC transport department have put the city corporation authorities into a helpless situation.

According to the DCC transport department, 393 vehicles of the city corporation are now in operation and 88 are at workshops for servicing.

However, DCC's documents of April 2007 show that the city corporation has 547 vehicles. DCC sold 68 old vehicles in auction since 2002, sources said.

BM Enamul Hoque, who recently joined as the head of the transport department, said about 75 vehicles are used for carrying DCC staff but they need at least 100 vehicles for this purpose.

For carrying wastes the DCC needs at least 300 vehicles but the transport department has only 150 such vehicles in operation, Enamul added.

Apart from the shortage of transports, DCC is also facing a shortage of drivers. DCC has 348 drivers against 355 positions while the requirement of drivers is not less than 400.

Enamul said shortage of vehicles and drivers hinder waste management of the city as well as the other municipal services that DCC provides.

He said DCC might get some vehicles from Japanese donor agency Jica for waste management of the city, which would ease the crisis. "But now it is hard for the corporation to maintain all the municipal services."

Interestingly, an information guide of DCC shows a list of 662 vehicles. Enamul said at least 141 equipments have been shown in the list as vehicles but equipment like generator, concrete mixer machine or stone crasher are not vehicles at all.