The Hindu              22.05.2013

Civic body gets government’s nod for plan to privatise garbage collection

The Erode Corporation has received approval from the State Government for its plan to privatise the garbage collection in select wards in the town.

The civic body has worked out the plan as it faces serious shortage of sanitary workers, which has adversely affected the garbage collection process in many parts of the town.

According to the plan, the process of collecting waste in 16 wards will be handed over to a private agency.

The civic body has already selected four wards from each zone – wards 2, 3, 6 and 8 from Zone I, wards 17, 26, 28 and 30 from Zone II, wards 31, 32, 33 and 34 from Zone III and wards 46, 50, 55 and 56 from Zone IV.

The civic administration will call for tenders and select an agency after taking the approval from the Corporation council, sources here say.

Once implemented, the private agency will collect the garbage at the doorsteps and segregate before handing it over to the civic workers for transporting it to the dump yard at Vendipalayam.

The town generates more than 150 tonnes of garbage, including a large amount of plastic and polythene waste, every day.

Residents and commercial establishments dump huge amount of waste on the streets as the civic body is not able to implement door-to-door waste collection in all the parts of the town due to labour shortage. The garbage in areas remains uncollected for days together.

The civic officials hope that privatisation will help streamline the garbage collection and improve the sanitary conditions significantly.

The process of waste collection in other wards will also be privatised in a phased manner, civic officials say.