Councillors flag irregular pickup to MCG chief as garbage mounts in Gurgaon

Gurgaon: MCG councillors flagged the city's poor waste management in their introductory meeting with new MCG commissioner Pradeep Dahiya on Monday. The commissioner notified councillors that a comprehensive door-to-door waste collection tender is prepared and will be sent to the state govt for approval within three days.

Sources said the estimated cost of the project is Rs 487 crore. The door-to-door waste collection tender will be given to a private firm for a period of seven years.

During the meet, Ward 11 councillor Kuldeep Yadav said the city's population estimates, according to MCG, lie between 20 and 24 lakh, while Gurgaon's actual population is over 40 lakh. "Anyone who resides in the city is a waste generator," he said. "If the estimates are made as per the actual population, the city's sanitation will certainly improve. For example, my ward requires 200 sanitation workers; however, we get only 50% of the work force based on MCG's population estimate. This gap needs to be filled to improve the city's cleanliness standards," he added.

"We proposed that the forthcoming sanitation tender should explicitly state the number of sanitation workers allocated for each ward, unlike the current MCG sweeping tender which focuses solely on service delivery. We emphasised that the tender specifications should consider the population density variations across wards, with worker allocation proportionate to the actual population of respective areas. The current deployment of sanitation workers appears insufficient when assessed against the actual population figures," said Vikas Yadav, councillor of Ward 22.

The commissioner told the councillors that the door-to-door waste management tender of the entire city is ready and will be sent to the state govt for approval within three days. Moreover, the commissioner said new technology will be introduced to ensure better surveillance and improve the city's waste management.

TOI reported on April 15 that the Urban Local Bodies (ULB) department questioned the accuracy of a survey, which estimated Gurgaon's population at 26.16 lakh in 2022. ULB commissioner and secretary Vikas Gupta told MCG that the estimate was "inaccurate" and "unreliable".

In the last census conducted by the Centre in 2011, Gurgaon district's population was 15.1 lakh, and residents living in areas under MCG's jurisdiction came down to 9 lakh. Since then, the city has rapidly grown, and so has MCG's jurisdiction. Currently, MCG has 36 wards across the city that fall under its jurisdiction.