The Chandigarh Smart City Limited (CSCL) has finally cleared a budget of ₹33 crore to buy 450 door-to-door garbage collection vehicles.

The agenda was passed in MC General House last year but since the MC did not have adequate funds to buy the vehicles, the CSCL had agreed to fund the project. During Thursday’s technical committee meeting, the project was cleared and the tender document is being prepared, which will be floated next month.

The order will be placed in the Government of India’s online marketplace (GeM). “We hope the vehicles will arrive by April or May, after which they will be put to use immediately,” said an official of the CSCL.

VEHICLES KEY TO MC’S RELAUNCH OF SEGREGATION

The purchase of these waste collection vehicles is key to MC’s waste segregation project that has failed four times in the past due to lack of infrastructure.

These vehicles will have two compartments, one for collection of dry waste and another for wet waste.

As per MC’s deal with the private door-to-door waste collectors, the workers will be employed to operate these vehicles and collect waste, and transport it to the transfer stations that are already under construction.

The delay in bringing waste reforms into force has cast a shadow on the MC’s resolve to improve its ranking in the 2020 edition of Swachh Survekshan.

One of the pivotal parameters of the survey is waste segregation, which the MC has not been successful in implementing so far. The poor response of city residents has only aggravated MC’s problems.

The city faced embarrassment last year when its rank fell from third in 2018 to 20th in 2019. Chandigarh has already faltered in league rounds in the run up to the final rankings for 2020 and is placed at 27.

This time, Chandigarh will be evaluated out of 6,000 marks in the final ranking of which 25% is for improvement in waste management, 25% for direct observation of city residents, another 25% for performance in garbage star rating system and 25% for performance in league rounds.

MC may get a low score mainly due lack of compliance with parameters including segregation of waste at source, integration of informal waste collectors, maintenance of water bodies/drains, non-implementation of plastic waste rules and capacity building exercise of sanitation workers.