TRICHY: The Tiruchirappalli Corporation on Wednesday passed a resolution to outsource garbage cleaning to private parties. Talking to The Times of India after the meeting, corporation commissioner, Veeraraghava Rao
said that to start with, garbage collection in the Gandhi Market area
and the Central Bus Stand would be outsourced on a trial basis and then
it would be extended to the rest of the city.

The sanitary
department of the corporation had received a lot of flak in the recent
past, as heaps of garbage was not cleared in time. This is because there
are only nine sanitary inspectors assigned for supervising 65 wards for
a population of nearly one million.

Moreover, of the 60-odd
posts of sanitary supervisors about 50 of them are yet to be filled.
Sources said record clerks, bill collectors and drivers were not
interested to get promoted as conservancy workers in the grade of
sanitary supervisors.

There should have been a sanitary
supervisor in each of the 60 wards, supervising a total of 1,743
sanitary workers who carry the garbage in push-carts to the 1.5 tonne
compacter bins at designated collection points in the city from where it
would be taken to the ultimate composite yard in the 2.5 metric tonne
container bins.

Interestingly, in its first session on November
14, the corporation admitted that 22 workers, who were serving in the
sanitary and engineering departments had been allowed to drive the
corporation vehicles to tide over the severe shortage of licensed
drivers.

Out of a total of 113 sanctioned posts, only 70 drivers
are working on a permanent basis and the rest are outsourced from
retired ex-servicemen. The corporation also authorised to recruit 15
such drivers on contract basis. As of today, the corporation has a total
number of 140 vehicles.

As such, cleaning the streets of
garbage was a paramount problem for the cash-strapped corporation and
outsourcing became the only solution as it is also heavily
short-staffed.

The commissioner also stated in the house that
the Rs 221 crore drinking water project would be completed by April next
year. Out of a total 37 new overhead water tanks, 20 are completed and
the remaining 17 are in varying stages of completion, he said.

Rao confided that the contract period had been extended and if
everything now goes to according to plan, the project what would have
fulfilled the total water needs of the city would be ready by April next
year.