On Friday, the first day of the New Year, the city’s garbage transfer stations overflowed with waste, due to scarcity of vehicles to transport it to the Jawaharnagar land fill.
The term of hired vehicles expired on December 31 and has not been renewed by the GHMC, while the corporation’s own vehicles are too few to shift the entire garbage. GHMC authorities intended to hand over the component of garbage transportation from transfer stations up to the dump yard to Ramky Enviro Engineers Limited (REEL), the concessionaire agency for Solid Waste Management in city.
However, despite promising stench free garbage transfer through state of the art vehicles, REEL did not have enough number of trucks to carry the brief, and had to seek services of the hired vehicles.
Talks between contractors of hired vehicles and REEL authorities, mediated by the GHMC Transport wing officials on Thursday, have not reached any agreement in this regard.
The contractors sought two days’ time to arrive at a decision.
As a result, there were very few vehicles with large capacity to carry the waste from transfer stations up to the land fill, say sources. While trash piled up at all the 17 major transfer stations in city, the situation was especially bad at the ones in Lower Tank Bund and Yusufguda.
President of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Employees’ Union (GHMEU) Udhari Gopal, however, blamed devious deals between circle level officials and contractors for the situation.
“Thus far, officials were receiving kickbacks from the contractors to show inflated amounts of garbage, and with the latest decision, they are apprehensive of loss of income. That’s why they did not allow GHMC’s own garbage trucks to pick up waste from a few transfer stations,” he said.
GHMC has condemned several of its vehicles, and is left with too few 25-tonners for transportation from the transfer stations. It is forced to depend on hired vehicles, which are now terminated.
