MCG Floats Rs 8.4 Crore Tender for Zone-Wise Trolleys, Earthmovers

GURUGRAM: The Municipal Corporation of Gurugram on Friday floated tenders to hire tractor-trolleys and earthmovers for each of the city’s eight zones, putting an estimated Rs 8.4 crore on the table while contractual sanitation and fire workers stayed off duty for a 23rd day.

The hired fleet is meant to collect, load and move municipal waste from wards to processing and treatment plants. Tender papers also list drain cleaning, lifting garbage from roads, sweeping, and the collection and transport of garden waste. Each zone is to get tractors with trolleys and earthmovers, along with drivers and operators. Hours of work will be fixed by the corporation or an authorised officer as the load changes from one neighbourhood to another.

MCG officials said the contractor must supply the machines and bear running costs. The same agency will empty existing dustbins at designated points and clean them three times a day. Sanitation rounds are to cover residential and commercial stretches and the green belts along major roads and sectors under the corporation. The quantity of work can be scaled up or cut, the tender says, if the civic body changes the requirement.

Hired vehicles will be tracked. Agencies have to fit GPS devices at their own cost and plug the feed into MCG’s integrated command and control centre and the Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority. Machines may be inspected before they are put on the road. Contractors will also carry vehicle insurance and feed records into Haryana’s solid waste management portal.

“We want to strengthen our sanitation machinery and improve waste collection and transportation across the city’s eight zones. The earthmovers will also support drain cleaning and other heavy-duty sanitation operations that cannot be efficiently carried out manually,” an MCG official said.

Door-to-door lifting has been patchy for more than three weeks as unions press the state to honour a 13 May settlement, including regularisation of palika-roll workers and an end to the contract system. Heaps have been reported along Khandsa Road near Bhuteshwar temple, DAV School Chowk, the Delhi Road–Sirhaul stretch, Choma village and Khandsa. Rain earlier this month left garbage sitting in water, which health staff have already flagged while they survey homes for fever.

The Friday tender is the corporation’s attempt to keep some mechanical capacity in the field even if the strike holds through the 30 August deadline the unions have set. Earthmovers can clear roadside mounds and scrape choked drains that a depleted manual workforce cannot touch. GPS monitoring is meant to show whether hired machines actually reach the wards they are billed against.

The same civic body last week moved to hire two private agencies to catch stray cattle, a separate contract that also sits against a thin field staff. Neither tender settles the wage and regularisation dispute. It does, however, put a price on keeping bins emptied and drains workable in August, when standing water and rotting waste travel together.

Bidders who win will work to MCG’s daily roster. If the strike ends before the machines are on hire, the corporation can still use them for monsoon drain work and garden-waste runs. If it does not, the eight-zone fleet is what the city will have until 30 August — and, the unions warn, possibly after that.