At the general House meeting at the Municipal Corporation office in Sector 17, Chandigarh. (Representational/Express photo: Sahil Walia)The private company that was hired for sanitation work in the city will be pulled out of service soon. The Municipal Corporation (MC) has initiated the process to cancel its contract, citing financial constraints. MC commissioner Bhupinder Pal Singh said the process of cancelling the contract was initiated after they received a letter from the local bodies department.
The MC is paying Rs 13 crore annually to the company that was roped in for a period of five years in 2015. The decision may spell trouble as the city’s sanitation work is already under fire from the residents. The MC roped in Lions Services Limited for a period of five years for sanitation work in the city in August 2015. The Sanitation Workers’ Union opposed the MC’s decision then. Many councillors also raised objections over the hefty payment to the company. The contract was to end in August 2020. The company was allotted the work of mechanised road sweeping and sanitation work in the residential areas.
Cabinet minister Balbir Singh Sidhu raised the issue in Punjab Assembly in July 2017 about the high cost and demanded the contract be cancelled. In January this year, the local bodies department demanded the same due to payment issue.
Sources in MC told Chandigarh Newsline that a show cause notice would be issued to the company in a day or two, following which the contract would be cancelled.
CL Garg, president of the Confederation of Residents Welfare Association, said the condition of roads cleaned with machines is not satisfactory. “Machines sometimes do not work properly or the drivers drive them at high speed. The monitoring system of the work is also poor,” he said. However, the MC is yet to make an action plan on sanitation work after the private company’s contract is cancelled.
Gurbinder Singh Bhatti, project director, Lions Services Limited, said that they were yet to receive MC notice.
