Jindal Urban Infrastructure Limited and MBM-Dallah — the consortium selected by Bihar Urban Infrastructure Development Corporation (BUIDCo) for sanitation services in 62 wards of the city — will reward citizens reporting about garbage heap and punish those littering the city.

A source in the firm said residents would be encouraged to report heaps of garbage strewn anywhere. They will be rewarded.

“We will provide citizens with certain phone numbers for this. Once they make the call, we will send our workers to the spot reported about. They will take photograph of the garbage and then remove it. We have not decided how much will the cash reward be. But the penalty for those caught littering streets will be double the reward amount,” said a company official.

The current practice of collecting waste from some earmarked points at major stretches in the city will also be done away with. “The practice is not only a major aesthetic concern, it hampers traffic as well. We are choosing alternative points from where waste will be collected,” the company official added.

Officials in Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC) said efforts were on to hand the project to the firm in public-private partnership mode.

“While A2Z Private Infrastructure Limited, which was awarded the contract to carry out the works in 10 wards of the city, used to charge Rs 728 per tonne of waste collected, the new firm will charge only Rs 510 per tonne. As contract with A2Z company stands annulled now, we are keen to ensure that the new firm takes over the work at the earliest,” said Shailesh Chandra Diwakar, the officer on special duty to PMC commissioner Pankaj Kumar Pal.