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.