The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided to privatise sanitation work in 13 more wards from this year under a seven-year contract.
The BMC’s long-awaited proposal to divide the City into four zones for better management of solid waste has been completed and the zones will be called packages. Package I will comprise 12 wards, package II and IV will have 4 wards and package III 13 wards. From this year, the BMC will have seven wards under it.
The 53 wards in the City produce 340 tonnes municipal solid waste (MSW) every day. For managing such a huge amount of solid waste, better management mechanism has to be put in place. As per the tender, every package will have to be managed by the contractors separately. “We will not put complete City under one zone as then we will not have any back-up if the main system fails,” said BMC Commissioner Sanjib Mishra.
He added that BMC will prefer to hire separate contractors for different zones so that they have different options for the sanitation system. One contractor can bid for more than one package, but it is mandatory that the packages are managed differently. Mishra said this is the format applied in bigger cities and metros.
In order to attract more bidders for the project, the annual turnover requirement for the bidders has been kept at `4 crore. The complete project cost has been estimated at `30 crore per year. The process of tendering is expected to be completed by August. The current sanitation work in private wards are being done under an extended tender whose tenure will be over in April.