Gurgaon: The long-awaited streamlining of door-to-door waste collection in the city has hit yet another roadblock. MCG has been forced to scrap its ongoing tender process to hire two private contractors for the entire city.The delay comes from Haryana urban local bodies (ULB) department revising the request for proposal (RFP) for the sixth time, prompting the civic body to halt the current bidding process. MCG officials will now prepare a revised cost estimate and send it to the department before new tenders can be floated.Earlier, the civic body had floated the tender to hire two agencies for the city’s door-to-door waste collection estimated to cost Rs 315.2 crore.MCG officials said that the latest revision in RFP significantly alters the eligibility criteria for participating agencies. Earlier, bidders were required to have prior experience working in a metropolitan city.The ULB department has now diluted the condition, allowing agencies with experience in any municipal corporation to qualify. The repeated changes to the RFP have not only stalled the tender process but also pushed back the timeline for implementing a unified door-to-door waste collection system in the city.MCG executive engineer Sunder Sheoran said, “We are going to make a fresh estimate based on the revised clauses in the RFP. We will submit the fresh estimate by the beginning of the next week.”According to the latest letter sent by the ULB Haryana to MCG and MCF (Faridabad), the civic body has been directed to incorporate two key amendments in the RFP for door-to-door municipal solid waste collection and transportation work, following decisions taken in a meeting chaired by the chief minister on March 7.The most significant change relates to eligibility conditions for bidders. Under the clause in the previous RFP, companies were required to show experience in door-to-door collection and transportation of municipal solid waste (MSW) up to the processing site, or in an integrated project including collection, transportation and processing in any metropolitan area during the last seven financial years (2018-2025).The amended clause narrows the eligibility criteria geographically. Instead of allowing experience in “any metropolitan area,” bidders must now demonstrate similar experience specifically in a municipal corporation area during the same seven-year period.Under the previous RFP clause, yearly price escalation was mainly linked to the Wholesale Price Index (WPI). The contractor’s payment could increase every year based on WPI (inflation index).However, now escalation will be divided into manpower and non-manpower (fuel, machinery etc.) components. Labour cost increases will directly follow govt minimum wage revisions, instead of being mainly tied to WPI.It was in Jan this year that the Haryana govt granted revised administrative approval for the door-to-door municipal solid waste (MSW) collection and transportation project in the city after months of delays and repeated tender revisions. The approval was granted following months of complaints about garbage pile-ups, irregular waste collection, and growing public frustration.This situation began in June 2024 when MCG terminated its contract with Ecogreen due to poor performance. A one-year replacement agency also failed, forcing the civic body to rely on temporary arrangements that residents have described as inconsistent and ineffective.The lengthy approval process has also raised concerns about inefficiency within the urban local bodies department. The first RFP for the door-to-door waste collection project was issued on July 12, 2024. Since then, the RFP was revised five times, on May 14, June 10, Sept 25 and Dec 5, 2025, after the contract period was initially extended from five to seven years on Jan 7, 2025, before reverting to five years.
