The Pioneer 21.10.2010
Garbage disposal set to burn a hole in Ranchiites’ pocketsPNS | Ranchi
Days are not far away when about 15 lakh residents of Ranchi will have to pay additionally for getting their garbage collected and disposed. As per the proposals of solid waste management plan, for which the Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC) is on the verge of finalising a garbage disposal company, every household may be charged anywhere near `30 to `50 for a month against the service.
The most important thing in this perspective is that the residents would not have options to dump their garbage in the dustbins. The civil body is toeing the guideline set under the JNNURM which aims to make cities recycle bin free. In this case the residents would be compelled to dump their wastage to the company. The charge would be in addition to the tax they pay to the municipal body that also includes sanitation services.
“We collect tax against disposing the garbage dumped in the dustbins and not for the door-to-door collection. We want to abide by the instruction under the JNNURM that aims to make cities free of dustbins. The amount charged against the door-to-door waste collection would not be much and we hope that civic sense of residents would prevail,” said a senior official of the RMC.
The civil body had invited the technical bid for the solid waste management in the Capital city and eight companies out of the nine applied have been declared qualified. Following this, a Request-for-Proposal (RFP) would be issued to them shortly before finally selecting a company by going through the lowest bidder for the purpose. Big corporate and renowned companies carrying expertise in the field of solid waste management in several other cities have participated for Ranchi. The list includes JUSCO, a 2 z Infrastructure, SPML and Ajanta Biotech etc.
If everything goes in a planned manner, the solid waste management exercises, that would include door-to-door collection, transportation and disposal of urban waste, would start functioning from the early next year. “The project, if become a success, would revamp the entire face of the city,” said the officer.
The company selected for the purpose is likely to earn its revenue by manufacturing products like eco-bricks, manure or electricity by processing about 360 metric tons of solid waste generated daily in the city. Some companies participating in the bidding possess vast and successful experience in amicably managing solid waste. The project would be assigned for about 30-years period.
The vans used for garbage collection may be installed with Global Positioning System to monitor its movement in the various areas of the city. Trucks and trolleys would reach every zone, ringing an alarm early morning, to collect solid waste from the doorstep.
Selected firms would firstly go for awareness campaigns among the residents about the exercise to make it successful. The Centre has allocated `51 crore for the project that would be run on public-private partnership basis.
In the meanwhile, the RMC has opened financial bids arrived from four companies for installing slaughter houses in Ranchi. Process of securitising the bids are on and the work would finally be allotted to the lowest bidder at the end this week. It would centralise the slaughtering of animals and make the city cleaner and sanitised.
