Faridabad stinks as garbage piles up

Bijendra Ahlawat

Tribune News Service

Faridabad, November 2

After getting complaints of poor work, the Faridabad Municipal Corporation has withheld the payment of over Rs 9 crore to the company looking after solid waste management in the city for the past over two years. This has resulted in poor civic conditions with garbage piling up across the city.

An amount of Rs 1 crore each month is paid to the company, Ecogreen, for this work. “We have stopped the payment in the view of the complaints and the company’s failure to redress the issues regarding the efficient collection and disposal of solid waste in the city,” said DR Bhaskar, chief engineer, MC.

He said while a payment of Rs 6 crore was pending for the past six months, an amount of Rs 3 crore was due for the last year. This includes the penalties imposed by the civic body. He said though the payments would be cleared only after a clear-cut progress and the issuance of an NOC by the Mayor and the elected corporators of the various wards in the city, the MC may also recommend the termination of the contract if things do not improve. The payments were stopped in January and June as well and that too on similar grounds, Bhaskar added.

Claiming that due payments had risen to Rs 13 crore, Ravi Trivedi, an official of the Ecogreen, however, refuted the charges of poor work . Alleging that the MC staff had not been cooperating, he said the company was being asked to clear the unauthorised dumping sites. “It was working hard to improve the situation despite the hurdles,” he added.