Even as the City Corporation gears up for its routine pre-monsoon cleaning drive in the midst of an acute garbage disposal crisis, tender process initiated by the Small Industries Development Corporation (SIDCO) to procure two mobile incineration units for the city is heading to the final stage.
Mayor K. Chandrika will inaugurate the pre-monsoon cleaning drive of the Corporation at Palayam market on Thursday. Each ward has been granted Rs.15,000 for vector control measures, cleaning of drains, clearing of shrubs, and overgrown vegetation.
SIDCO officials said the technical evaluation committee headed by Kerala Pollution Control Board chairman K. Sajeevan was preparing the final report citing the prices quoted by the companies that were short-listed in the technical bid.
“We had to do some calculation to bring down the figures quoted by the companies to a comparable benchmark. That is almost final and now we will be submitting our report to the State government,” an official said.
Two mobile incinerators will be procured by the State government to facilitate processing of waste in the capital city. As many as four companies, including two European ones, had participated in the technical bid and all the four qualified. The officials said the companies satisfied most of the technical specifications mentioned in the tender document, except the criterion for height of the exhaust valve.
Ideally, the minimum height of exhaust valves of incineration units is to be 30 m or higher than the height of the nearest building. However, as per the proposals presented by the companies, the height of the incineration unit is less than 30 m.
“There are some limitations in having tall exhaust valves for mobile units. So what we have done is upgrade the emission standard of exhaust gases. We have also made it mandatory to have digital display boards for the incineration units in order to display emission values in real time,” Mr. Sajeevan said.
Although the government may sanction the final bid within a week, it might take another month-and-a-half to procure the incinerators after the orders are placed since the units have to be custom-made by the companies as per the tender specifications.
