Garbage piled up on Boring Road in Patna on Wednesday. Picture by Ranjeet Kumar Dey

Patna, July 27: God created the heaven and the earth in six days. The suspension of work by A2Z Infrastructure Private Limited — the private company appointed to cart away garbage from some parts of the city — has managed to do exactly the opposite for the state capital.

Ironically, the employees of Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC) claim that employing private agencies to carry out civic tasks like carting away garbage does not reduce the expenditure of the civic body. It is an extravagant gesture that PMC can least afford.

On the seventh day since the agency suspended its services over non-payment of its bills by PMC, the most common sight on the streets was garbage. Heaps of waste that have not been removed for days has turned into slush. The foul odour emanating from it is enough to knock out anyone passing by.

The firm suspended its services on July 21. According to the firm, PMC owes it Rs 7.6 crore for services rendered over the past 18 months. The civic body officials, however, claim that there are a number of anomalies in the bills submitted by A2Z Infrastructure Private Limited and the dues would be cleared only after a strict verification, as the private company had violated its contract.

Caught in the crossfire are you and I — we have to live with the stench and the waste.

“The road that leads to Shrikrishna Nagar is in such a bad shape that vehicles are facing difficulties in passing through it. The garbage has not been removed for days. Stray cattle frequent the dump to feed on the garbage. We find it difficult to step out of the house because of the stench,” said Boring Road resident Sangeeta Srivastava, a homemaker.

Sources in the civic body said the entire situation could have been avoided, as bringing in the private party has hardly helped the civic body. Employing the private firm to cart away garbage from some parts of the city has not reduced the sanitation expenditure of PMC. Earlier, the civic body used to spend Rs 1 crore for sanitation of the whole city. It still spends the same amount to clean up the parts of the city not under the purview of A2Z Infrastructure Private Limited.

Chandra Prakash Singh, the president of Indian National Trade Union Congress-backed PMC Staff Union, said: “The private firm has produced bills of Rs 50 lakh per month on an average to clean nine streets and nine wards in the city. PMC spends another Rs 1 crore to clean the rest of the city as it used to before the private firm was employed.”

He added: “If the sanitation work for the entire city was outsourced to the firm, it would charge over Rs 10 crore. What is the point of using such an extravagant service when financial health of the corporation is so bad?” he asked.

“Instead of taking care of the basic problems, the government is outsourcing the services to private companies who are busy fleecing us with the connivance of some insiders,” said another member of the union.