Garbage cleaning in Trichy city to be outsourced

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.