Urban News

Indian Express 11.09.2009

Bids for 9 cities cancelled, fresh bids on Sept 14

The Uttar Pradesh Jal Nigam has cancelled all the bids that were received so far for setting up the Solid Waste Management system in 9 cities. The fresh bids will now be invited on September 14 and the received bids will be opened on the same day.

According to an official, the bids were cancelled as the bidding firms had quoted high tipping fees in their financial bids for collection and transportation of solid waste.

The project, which is under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), was approved by the Centre for 9 cities — Lucknow, Aligarh, Mathura, Jhansi, Meerut, Gorakhpur, Allahabad, Varanasi and Moradabad.

According to the system, a single firm will be responsible from collecting the waste material to the formation of bio-fertiliser to the disposal at the land fill site.

The Construction and Design Services (C&DS), a wing of Jal Nigam, is executing the bidding process on behalf of the urban local bodies. The Jal Nigam has also appointed a Gurgaon-based company, Deloittee Touche Tohmatsu India Private Limited, as the consultant for the project.

“The Jal Nigam had estimated an amount as tipping fees in the bid document. But the tipping fees that bidders had quoted in the financial bids were 50 to 80 per cent higher than the amount estimated by the Jal Nigam,” said a C&DS official.

“The high tipping fees was not feasible for the project. Hence, all the bids were cancelled,” said the official. In case of high tipping fees, people will have to pay high service charge.

According to Director of C&DS P K Bhukesh, a new condition has been added in the bid document, whereby a firm cannot hike the tipping fees for the first three years.

The Jal Nigam had received 29 bids in June for these cities from four firms — SPML, RAMKY, A2Z and Hydro Air. The technical bids received for Lucknow and Gorakhpur had been cancelled in the initial stage and fresh bidding process was started for both the cities in August. For the rest, the evaluation of the financial bids started from July 24.

To ensure use of land fill site for a longer time, the government has put a condition that the firm will have to utilise 80 per cent waste and dispose only 20 per cent.

Currently, over 1,300 MT of solid waste is generated in Lucknow, 600 MT each in Varanasi, Meerut, Allahabad; 280 MT each in Moradabad and Gorakhpur, 220 MT in Aligarh, 200 MT in Jhansi and 180 MT in Mathura.

Indian Express 11.09.2009

Kalbadevi sees spurt in cholera cases, BMC screens residents

The congested Kalbadevi area has witnessed a a sudden increase in cholera cases with nine persons from the locality already admitted to hospitals in the last two days. The area houses an enormous amount of contaminated water, one of the major causes of the disease. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has started screening residents in the area.

Till late Thursday evening, nine people were admitted to Kasturba Hospital while two were admitted to GT Hospital with cholera symptoms, including vomiting, diarrhea and fever. The patients are from Ramnath Sadan, a makeshift godown where a floating population of about 15 to 20 resides. All of them tested positive for cholera in the hanging drop test to ascertain the bacteria strain.

However Dr Jairaj Thanekar, executive health officer, BMC, insists that these are diarrhoea and vomiting cases and not classic (more virulent strain) cholera cases. “It is not a case of classic cholera. They only tested positive in the hanging drop test.”

Additional municipal commissioner (health), Manisha Mhaiskar said, “There was no municipal water tap and they were getting the supply from a well. The water was supplied by a handcart puller and later stored in a plastic drum. We suspect this as the reason for cholera.”

Of the nine admitted Virendra Jadhav (20) and Lalchand Verma (28) are serious. “Virendra was admitted to GT Hospital after he suffered bouts of vomiting and loose motion,” said his uncle Sadguru Prasad. “He became very weak and could not even walk till the hospital. He vomited several times on the road,” he added.

The doctors of city’s Jaslok Hospital have performed a rare stem cell transplant for Parkinson’s disease. The transplant was performed on 54-year-old Bhanwarlal Jain who has been suffering from advanced Parkinson’s disease.

While the doctors who performed the transplant said that they will monitor the patient for the next 18 months before terming it a ‘success’, Jain said the transplant has helped him regain his voice.

Jain was diagonsed with Parkinson’s disease — a degenerative ailment of the brain that often impairs motor skills, speech and other functions— 12 years ago. Despite treatment, his condition slowly deteriorated. “I was working then But had to quit due to spondilitis and severe pain in the joints. Slowly, I stopped walking and almost became dumb,” said Jain, who had to retire from business due to the illness.

In February this year, he came in contact with neurosurgeons at Jaslok Hospital, following which he volunteered to undergo trials for stem cell transplant. A team of doctors, including neurosurgeons and neurophysicians, carried out the complex surgery on Jain. “The stem cells that were used were derived from the patient’s bone marrow. They were then grown and processed at the stem cell processing facility of Reliance Life Sciences at Navi Mumbai. Once processed, they were brought back to Jaslok Hospital where they were implanted in the patient’s brain by stereotactic surgery. The whole procedure took three weeks,” said Dr Paresh Doshi, head of the stereotactic and functional neurosurgery department at the hospital.