CHENNAI: Even as conservancy workers staged a human chain protest on Wednesday opposing the privatisation of solid waste management in the city, the GCC floated tenders to engage private players for garbage collection and transportation in Tondiarpet and Anna Nagar, the only two zones where waste management was directly handled by the civic body.
With this, solid waste management in 14 zones in the city will be privatised while part of Ambattur zone (12 divisions) alone would remain with GCC.
Last month GCC handed over solid waste collection and transportation operations in Royapuram and Thiru-Vi-Ka Nagar zones to Delhi MSW Solutions Limited. The sanitary workers from at least 10 zones, led by CITU, joined the protest which was held at multiple locations.
“Contract workers under private agencies receive only around Rs 570 per day, compared to Rs 753 paid to regular corporation workers,” said P Srinivasalu, general secretary of CITU. “Private contractors also hesitate to hire anyone above 45 years of age unless with some conditions without PF and ESI benefits,” he said, urging the ruling DMK to implement its promise to provide permanent jobs to sanitary workers.
The two zones currently have 1,790 permanent and 3,390 temporary workers. While GCC usually redeploys its permanent staff to zones that still under its control when others were gradually privatised, it remains unclear where such large number of workers could be redeployed with only 12 divisions in Ambattur remaining with GCC.
Meanwhile, the corporation has initiated the bidding process to privatise solid waste operations in Tondiarpet and Anna Nagar zones, which together span 50.85 sq km with an estimated population of 21.39 lakh people and 5.34 lakh households.
The scope of the work to be privatised, which would be done as per the design-build-finance-operate-transfer (DBFOT) model, included door-to-door waste collection, street sweeping, clearing of drains and canals, handling of domestic hazardous and horticultural waste, and maintenance of hotspots. The contractors will also be responsible for cleaning TNUHDB tenements, covering 16,282 units across 36 sites.
The contractors are required to prioritise night conservancy operations for over 50% of the activities to reduce daytime traffic disruptions. In addition, a mobile application must be developed for project monitoring, and CCTV cameras must be installed and data should be fed to the GCC’s ICCC.
