ISLAMABAD: The Metropolitan Corporation Islamabad (MCI) on Thursday called proposals and bids of interest for firms in order to extend garbage collection services to the capital’s rural areas.

The MCI’s sanitation directorate currently only collects garbage in Islamabad’s urban areas, which consist of 18 union councils. The rural areas consist of 32 union councils, a few of which have some large pins in central locations where residents can dispose of domestic garbage.

In the rest of the rural areas, people either leave garbage out in the open or hire donkey-pulled carts that collect the garbage from homes and dispose of it in nullahs or in abandoned areas.

“[On Thursday] we called bids from interested firms. In the first stage, on Jan 28, we will open technical bids and after a few days we will open financial bids to award the contract,” Director Sanitation Sardar Khan Zimri.

Asked about funding, since the MCI has repeatedly said it does not have funds, he said there would be “no issue of funds as we have around Rs2 billion in our accounts”. The MCI will also charge the public for garbage collection, he said.

He said that by the time the tender is awarded the MCI’s rules of business will be finalised and they will be able to access the money in their accounts.

The contractor who wins the contract will have 2,400 employees and around 100 vehicles. After collecting garbage from people’s doorsteps, the contractor will dispose of it at the I-12 dumping site while the landfill site in Sangjani is being developed.

He said file work is under process for the Sangjani site and a consultant and project director are working on the project.

The sanitation directorate, which was part of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) before the MCI was formed, was supposed to collect garbage from Islamabad’s sectors.

It was then devolved to the MCI, which Mayor Sheikh Anser Aziz has said has no funds or power, after which its working was unsatisfactory.

Since the MCI has no funding, the CDA is still paying contractors and staff to lift garbage from the urban areas. For several months, employees have protested because they have not been paid on time.

The MCI announced a project to outsource garbage collection and extend it to the rural areas a couple of years ago, which hit a snap after the MCI disqualified all the interested firms after terming them ineligible.

Published in Dawn, December 13th, 2019