Bengaluru: Contractors' pay linked to garbage separation now

BENGALURU: The city municipal corporation has turned the heat on contractors by inserting a clause in the new garbage contracts: payments will be linked to performance in segregating waste. The move comes in the wake of complaints from citizens that contractors are mixing up the waste segregated at source.

Contractors, however, believe that the BBMP is using them as bogeymen.

The civic body invited bids for contracts to collect and transport municipal solid waste in 151 wards in the city. The bidding process ends on May 6.

The new garbage contracts are formulated based on a time-and-motion study that went into the resources required to handle the waste generated in each ward.

Unlike the old tenders that were awarded as packages covering a number of wards, the new contracts are being issued ward-wise. "Performance-based payment was never part of the tender system," BBMP's special commissioner for solid waste management Subodh Yadav said.

The new contract is based on an 80:20 ratio where 80% of the payment is towards the contractor providing vehicles and manpower while 20% of the payment is dependent on segre gation. “If they don't segregate, they won't get this 20%,“ Yadav said.

Bengaluru generates about 3,500 tonne of waste every day and less than 40% of it is being segregated.

“We have been asked to collect wet waste daily and dry waste on alternative days. The question of us mixing up waste doesn't arise at all,“ said SN Balasubramanyam, spokesperson of the Bruhat Bengaluru Garbage Contractors Association.

Under the new contract, the BBMP will enter into an escrow agreement with contractors and deposit three months of service fee that contractors can withdraw only after their performance is verified. This is among the many reasons contractors would refrain from bidding, Balasubramanyam said.

In fact, the civic body got a poor response when it floated these new tenders in 95 wards last year. “We got only 14 eligible bids and all of them had to be cancelled as the bid amount exceeded the limit,“ Mayor BN Manjunath Reddy said.

Sandhya Narayanan from the Solid Waste Management Round Table hailed the new contracts. “For the first time, payment is linked to the quality of waste contractors bring in,“ she said. Pointing out that contractors are not at the receiving end, she said: “They are empowered to refuse to collect waste from a noncompliant household."