Conservancy goes 70 per cent private

Chennai: In the next five months, almost 70 per cent of Chennai will be swept and cleaned by private contractors.

Conservancy works in 11 of the 15 Corporation zones in the city will be handled by private players in the coming months, as a part of which, Zones 11, 12, 14 and 15 (Valasaravakkam, Alandur, Perungudi and Sholinganallur) will be handed over to private firms next month.

The corporation is set to finalise the tender and the work is expected to be taken up by National Cleaning Company limited, a Kuwait-based conservancy operator, in a month.

Following this, the corporation will also call for tenders to outsource the operations in Zones 1, 2, 3 and 7 (Tiruvottiyur, Manali, Madhavaram and Ambattur).

 In Chennai, Zones 9, 10 and 13 (Teynampet, Kodambakkam and Adyar) are already under private contractors. Contractors Ramkey Enviro has been carrying out the conservancy works in these three zones.

After outsourcing the conservancy operations in all these zones, the corporation will only have four of its zones, 4, 5, 6 and 8 (Tondiarpet, Royapuram, Thiruvika-Nagar and Anna Nagar), where the corporation will be using its staff to carry out conservancy activities.

“We do not want to privatise the entire city. We have made sure that zones with important structures and government offices still fall under our direct control in terms of conservancy works,” said a senior corporation official in Ripon Buildings.

“We will have our own fleet of workers to make sure that in case of any crisis the civic body is well equipped. We maintain about 20,000 roads and the staff strength is sufficient,” he added.

As of now, the corporation has over 9,000 permanent labourers and 5,000 contract workers working in the rest of city other than the parts handled by Ramkey.

The main purpose of privatisation was the economic logic behind it, the official said, explaining that outsourcing the work would cost less than having the corporation do it.

Now the Corporation pays about Rs 1,600 to Ramkey for a tonne of garbage cleared while the amount exceeds Rs 2,000 in parts where it is handled by their own staff.

“We pay the labourers more than the contractors. On an average, our workers get around Rs 20,000 every month as salary while the contractors pay way less than us — around Rs 6,000 or RS 7,000. This reduces the expenditure,” the official said.

“Once outsourced, the permanent staff working in those zones will be diverted to the corporation-maintained areas or absorbed in other departments which need staff strength,” he added.

“Garbage does not stagnate very often in our area. But if there is going to be any damage in the bins, it takes days to get repaired,” said S. Sanjith, a resident of Jeevanatham street, KK Nagar, in the Kodambakkam zone.