Door-to-door garbage collection to begin from Monday with many hiccups

Jaipur: Door-to-door garbage collection will get off the group in Jaipur with many hiccups. Starting Monday, the company tasked with the project was supposed to collect garbage from 27 municipal wards of the city, but it seems the work will start in only 8 wards. The company has blamed the lack of resources for not launching the scheme in 27 wards, according to Jaipur Municipal Corporation (JMC) officials.

City mayor Ashok Lahoti and JMC commissioner Hemant Gera held a meeting with company representatives on Saturday and asked them to show the company’s action plan for launching the door-to-door garbage collection scheme from Monday. The company officials said that it would be launched in eight wards only.

Read Also: Dravyavati River Project in Jaipur: Everything you need to know

The company haven’t arranged for adequate number of vehicles to be used in transportation of garbage collected from households. It has only 64 vehicles and each ward needs at least 16. These vehicles are BS-III complaint, while as per the latest Supreme Court directives, only BS-IV complaint vehicles should be used. The scheme may run into legal hurdles if the company didn’t arrange for BS-IV complaint vehicles.

Company is supposed to collect garbage from eight lakh households in the city in three phases. The company’s contract began nearly one and a half months ago, but there are still several loopholes.

JMC opened the financial bids of Mumbai-based Global Waste Management and BVG India, Pune, the participating firms in November, 2016, and awarded the contract to the latter which had the lowest quote.

It took JMC nearly 18 months to complete the tender process. The JMC had invited tenders for the door-to-door garbage collection after dividing the city into three divisions. In the first division, the agency has included Hawa Mahal (West), Amer and Vidhyadhar Nagar areas; in the second comes Hawa Mahal (East), Moti Doongri and Sanganer areas. Similarly, the third division covers Civil Lines and Mansarovar areas.

After waste collected from households is transported to landfills, another company, JITF Urban Infrastructure Ltd of Jindal group will process it. The agency is planning to generate nearly 7MW a day from processing 650 tonnes of waste.

JMC had decided recently that it will not impose any charges for first three months.

Following will be the charges after the initial three months:

• Houses measuring up to 50 square metre will pay Rs 20 per month.
• Rs 80 will be charged from houses measuring from 51 square metres to 300 square metres.
• Those measuring more than 300 square metres will pay a maximum of Rs 150.
• Commercial buildings will be charged Rs 250 per month.
• Rs 750 and Rs 500 will be levied on guest houses and hostels respectively.

JMC aims to generate a revenue of Rs 100 crore per year from garbage collection scheme.