Chennai:
Fed up of the mound of garbage piling up in Chennai,
the Chennai Municipal Corporation has outsourced the job
of keeping the southern metro clean. Private garbage clearance
company Neel Metal Fanalca Environment Pvt Ltd, which
has won the contract, will import around 1,000 plastic
garbage bins from Otto, Bangkok.
The
bins will be deployed in the three Chennai Corporation
Zones where the company has won the bid to clear the garbage.
"We
will import 600- and 700-litre bins and the deliveries
are expected shortly," says J S Batra, CEO, SPV,
Neel Metal.
The
garbage clearing company Neel Metal Fanalca is a 51:49
joint venture between Neel Metal Products Limited and
Fanalca SA, Columbia. Neel Metal Products is part of the
Delhi-based Rs2,000-crore diversified JBM group.
Fanalca,
which operates in Latin American countries, collects more
than 2,700 tonne of solid waste everyday.
In
Chennai, the joint venture won the Chennai Corporation''s
mandate to clear garbage in four zones, though, the corporation
has handed over three zones and will entrust the fourth
only after evaluating its performance.
According
to the agreement, Neel Metal Fanalca has to clear 1,100
tonnes of garbage every day. The company would get paid
at the rate of Rs673 per tonne in two zones and Rs645
in the remaining.
Though
Neel Metal Fanalca took charge of the cleaning-up operation
in the three zones effective from the early hours of 26
August, something somewhere seems tio have gone wrong
since the initial couple of days saw vast amounts of garbage
piling up.
The
company is said to have brought in inadequate manpower,
garbage bins and garbage compacting trucks and hook loaders,
perhaps underestimating Chennai''s capacity to generate
garbage.
The
citizens rightly coined the phrase stinkara (stinking)
Chennai that rhymed with the official slogan singara
(beautiful) Chennai and the issue soon became mired in
a major political controversy over
you guessed
it, garbage. Opposition parties like AIADMK called its
cadres to clear the garbage.
The
Chennai Corporation has now served a show cause notice
to Neel Metal Fanalca for its poor showing. The corporation
had to bring its own lorries and personnel in an emergency
clean-up operation in addition to sending out an SOS to
the previous clearing agency, Chennai Environmental Services,
commonly known as Onyx, as its seven-year term had ended.
So
why did Fanalca that has prior experience elsewhere in
the world falter in Chennai? Not agreeing with the view
that the company had tripped up in its promised service
delivery, S Pattabhiraman, vice president, Neel Metal
Fanalca, says, "The previous contractor failed to
clear garbage for one week prior to our taking over. The
situation worsened owing to the accumulated pile up and
some reasons that were beyond our control."
He
also said the company had placed an order for the bins
with Sintex Industries well in advance. Owing to a fire
accident in Sintex Industries'' plant, the bin deliveries
were delayed.
According
to Neel Metal Fanalca''s estimates the three zones would
require around 3,700 bins of 660- and 770-litre capacity.
Not only did it deploy 300 fewer bins than it should have,
even its bins had a lower capacity by 300-400 litres compared
to what Onyx had deployed earlier.
"Our
cleaning model involves source segregation and door-to-door
collection of garbage. This requires a fewer number of
bins," explains Pattabhiraman.
Facing
flak, the company has now installed bigger plastic drums
to collect the garbage.
Pattabhiraman
also said that he expected deliveries of compacting trucks
soon. It is understood to be supplied by a group company.
The company has estimated a fleet requirement of 32 compacting
trucks, 10 hook loaders and 160 Tata Ace 1-tonne trucks.
But
for the Tata Ace fleet, the company seems to have fallen
short of its own requirement of various vehicles. The
company has just one compactor and deliveries of 27 trucks
are expected. As a stopgap measure it is using 43 tippers
to ferry the garbage to the landfills.
On
manpower, too, the company is facing severe problem. Unlike
Onyx that employed conservancy staff, Neel Metal Fanalca
decided to rely on labour outsourcers to supply the workers.
Out
of total 2,700 people who reported for work initially,
1,500 quit their job immediately. "We had actually
budgeted for 1,500 conservancy staff. Now we have 1,200,"
remarks Pattabhiraman.
He
also says, the company has decided to change its human
resource policy and employ the workers and has now hired
300 so far. The coming days will prove whether the stinkara
Chennai becomes singara Chennai.
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