Gurgaon: A week after MCG awarded six-month contracts for door-to-door waste collection, the stop-gap arrangement has already run into trouble, with contractors deploying only 38% of the vehicles they promised. While officials said the agencies were given time to mobilise vehicles after taking over operations on July 9, residents rejected the explanation, pointing out that the contract itself is valid for only six months.Four agencies were tasked with deploying 591 vehicles but managed to field just 225. Residents questioned why contractors were allowed to start work without first securing the necessary infrastructure. However, MCG officials countered that buying vehicles for such a brief contract is impractical.“These vehicles and sanitation staff exist only on paper. The agencies subcontract the work to the vendors already operating in the area. In our area, there are no dedicated waste collection vehicles; garbage is collected using carts operated by these existing vendors. Records show that 40 sanitation workers are assigned to our area, but only 13 report for duty,” said Vidhyanand Nuniwal, a resident of Sector 4.“It has been more than two years since we have been suffering. Sanitation charges have already been introduced in our property tax bills, but there is no service from MCG,” said Rajesh Gera, a resident of Surya Vihar.He added, “If contractors need weeks just to arrange vehicles, what is the point of awarding such a short-term contract? By the time the promised fleet is on the roads, the contract will be nearing its end.”A physical verification of the vehicles will soon be done, officials said. “These agencies are in the process of mobilising vehicles since they were awarded work on July 9. We have instructed them to complete the fleet within a week,” MCG additional commissioner Ravinder Yadav said.Gurgaon’s waste management has relied on short-term contracts since June 2024, when MCG terminated Ecogreen Energy over poor performance. Since then, temporary arrangements have failed to fix irregular garbage collection and worsening sanitation. The urban local bodies department has revised the tender proposal multiple times, but a long-term model remains elusive. TOI earlier reported on repeated revisions to the tender framework.After Haryana govt declined to approve the rates quoted by participating agencies for Gurgaon’s waste collection project, MCG on June 26 reissued the tender to appoint two agencies for the work at a cost of Rs 647 crore.The selected agencies will be appointed for an initial period of five years, with the contract extendable by two years at a time for up to four additional years. The revised tender divides the city into two clusters of 18 wards each. Cluster 1 will cover around 3.1 lakh establishments, including 2.3 lakh residential units, while cluster 2 will cover about 2.7 lakh establishments, of which nearly 2 lakh are residential units.
