The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government will soon float a fresh tender for the city-wide mechanised cleaning of arterial roads, the Public Works Department (PWD) Minister Satyendar Jain said on Monday.
Mr. Jain said that no takers had stepped up to provide their services to the PWD on at least two occasions after the initiative commenced in April this year before gradually dwindling.
“We had floated two tenders but these got cancelled as no one applied. A fresh tender has been prepared and the government is going to float it soon,” Mr. Jain said.
A senior government official said that the new tender will call for separate service providers for mechanised sweeping and beautification of roads. The two services had been combined in the first two tenders.
When the initiative began, only a handful of vacuum machines, which are foreign-assembled, could be procured by the PWD from city-based contractors on a per-kilometre basis.
Given the meagre number of machines at their disposal, significant chunks of the Ring Road, the Outer Ring Road, National Highway-8, Rao Tula Ram Road, Africa Avenue and Aurobindo Marg were cleaned only on alternate days.
The project was deemed financially non-feasible.
“We had decided to procure around 15 machines but the cost involved did not seem viable. The government is now open to both purchasing its own machines as well as to foreign service providers,” said a senior official.
No takers have stepped up to provide their services to
the PWD on at least two occasions
