Gurgaon: MCG floated fresh tenders for manual road sweeping on Tuesday — the same day the extended contracts of six private agencies expired, leaving little buffer to ensure continuity of services.The civic body has now proposed a Rs 6.8 crore, three-month sanitation contract covering manual road sweeping, drain cleaning and bush removal across zones 1, 2, 3 and 4. The waste collected will have to be segregated into categories such as silt and dust, horticulture waste like dry leaves, biodegradable waste from vegetable and fruit markets and non-biodegradable waste and waste extracted from drains, before being transported to designated secondary collection points. The project will also include digital monitoring through the MCG portal, where road mapping, manpower deployment and sweeping schedules will be tracked. Agencies will have to upload daily reports with geo-tagged photographs of areas before and after sweeping, which will be verified by officials.However, the timing of the tender has raised questions about planning within the corporation.The agencies earlier received a six-month extension from Sept 1, 2025, to March 31, 2026, costing around Rs 127 crore, after approval from Haryana’s urban local bodies department. With fresh bids invited on the very day those contracts lapsed, there is a likelihood of a temporary gap in sweeping operations across several parts of the city. However, officials said sanitation workers employed directly by MCG would be deployed until new agencies are finalised.“The contract extension of the agencies got over so we floated the bids for manual sweeping of roads for three months. Sanitation workers employed by MCG will fill the gap till the process is completed,” said MCG executive engineer-Swachh Bharat Mission, Sunder Sheoran.To ensure compliance, monitoring committees and ward-level task forces comprising councillors, sanitation inspectors, resident welfare association representatives and market association members will oversee sanitation operations.Several residents expressed concern over the timing of the move and said it could lead to a ‘sanitation crisis’.“When MCG knew that the contracts of these six agencies were ending on March 31, it should have initiated the process at least a month in advance. Instead, the bids were invited on the very last day, which raises concerns about continuity of sanitation work. There is already a severe shortage of sanitation workers. In Palam Vihar alone, the number of workers has dropped from 137 earlier to just about 30 now,” said ward 4 councillor Pardeep Padam.“The gap is already huge and now residents may have to wait until this short-term manual sweeping contract is finalised after the earlier agencies’ contracts have ended,” he added.MCG officials said the estimated cost of the work varies across zones: Rs 2.4 crore for Zone 1, Rs 1.46 crore for Zone 2, Rs 45 lakh for Zone 3 and Rs 2.5 crore for Zone 4.The short-term arrangement is aimed at maintaining sanitation services and ensuring regular sweeping of roads and cleaning of drains until a longer-term plan is finalised, an official said.
