Patna, July 10: The private agency hired by the civic body to cart waste from different parts of the city would get its 75 per cent dues from Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC) by Tuesday.

The empowered standing committee of the civic body has directed PMC commissioner Divesh Sehara to pay the agency — A2Z Infrastructure Pvt. Ltd — at least 75 per cent of the outstanding amount, which stands at Rs 7.5 crore. It has set July 12 deadline for Sehara to make the payment.

The civic body has not been paying the private company for the sanitation work it has been carrying out for the past 17 months. Last week, the firm had threatened to stop the waste collection work. But it rolled back its decision after the civic body promised to clear its dues within 15 days.

Mayor Afzal Imam said the senior officers of the corporation were instructed to make the payment.

“We have asked the commissioner to pay 75 per cent of the total bill within next two days. The rest can be paid after verifying the bills and scrutinising the performance of the private agency,” Imam said.

The committee had instructed the officers last Monday to clear the dues of A2Z Infrastructure Pvt. Ltd within 15 days after the latter threatened to cease work. It placated the private firm and it continued with the job of waste collection. The PMC officers, however, had made it clear that the payment would be made subject to verification of the bills and scrutiny of the work carried out by the company. About 10 days ago, the private firm had written a letter to the PMC and had warned to stop work as the civic body did not pay a single penny to it since the agreement was signed between the two parties in January last year.

Vikas Jha, the deputy general manager of A2Z Infrastructure Pvt. Ltd, said his company would wait for the payment from PMC.

“The PMC as well as senior urban development department officers had assured us of payment within two weeks after and so we suspended our decision to stop work. But if the dues are not cleared on time this time, we might have to think over our decision all over again,” he added.

According to the agreement with the company, PMC is supposed to pay Rs 753 per day for per tonne of the garbage collected from the city. The firm is collecting about 200 tonnes of solid waste from the city every day.

The company looks after the sanitation of nine major streets, including Frazer Road, Bailey Road, Boring Road, Boring Canal Road, Exhibition Road, Beer Chand Patel Road, Ashok Rajpath, Old Bypass Road and Hardinge Road, apart from ward number 1 to 9 in the New Capital circle of the corporation.

Extra workers

Five extra sanitation workers would be deployed in the wards where the PMC gets the waste collected by its own labourers. A decision in this regard was taken in the meeting of the empowered standing committee.

“In the rainy season, the waste collection has to be given more priority. The additional workers would be deployed in two-three days,” the mayor said.