Garbage-lifting fraud: BMC takes preventive steps

No more passing the buck as the civic body will award the contract to only one agency, which will do all the work

To stop fraud in the city’s garbage lifting process, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has now decided to award the contract to only one contractor who will do everything. For example, the appointed contractor should have his own garbage compactor (vehicle) to collect the garbage, labourers to load and unload the waste till dumping ground and provide bins to the societies.

Presently the BMC appoints a contractor to provide large garbage bins in housing societies, while BMC labourers are seen lifting the bins and loading them into the vehicles. Meanwhile, transportation of garbage is the responsibility of a contractor to whom the work is awarded while the vehicle belongs to another. Then at the dumping ground too there are BMC workers who are involved in unloading garbage from the vehicles. But now as per the new contract format all the work will be allotted to one agency alone.

According to a senior civic official, the only intention to have such a contract is not to give any opportunity to contractors who usually give excuses that the garbage-lifting vehicles are of someone else, the labourers are of BMC, which also proves an easy way for them to escape whenever they are found doing any fraud. But, no more passing of th buck will be possible after introducing the new contractor format. In a pilot project, such a contract will be first implemented in wards namely R-South, which includes Kandivali, Charkop and Poisar; R-North, which includes Dahisar; R-Central, which consists of Borivali, Gorai, Magathane and T ward -Mulund. The contract period would be of seven years while the total contract cost for this period is estimated to be Rs. 400 crores. These wards have been selected as the garbage transportation contracts have expired.

The senior civic official added that the plan to introduce such type of contract was decided in 2017 January itself. Tenders were called, however, the interested bidders’ price amount was 40 per cent to 50 per cent more than the estimated cost. Therefore, the tenders were reevaluated and have been called again.

The civic corporation has been drawing flak when it had recently proposed to increase the contract period of garbage contractors for another six months despite filing police complaints against them for cheating the BMC by mixing debris with garbage. Recently two out of the seven contractors have been served a showcause notice as well as to why they should not be blacklisted considering that over four times the two were caught mixing debris with garbage.