Urban development and housing minister Maheshwar Hazari on Thursday inaugurated the much-awaited door-to-door garbage collection programme in the New Capital, Bankipore and Kankerbagh circles of Patna Municipal Corporation on public-private partnership mode.

The sanitation staff of the two private agencies - Patna-based Nishka Security and Intelligence Services and Delhi-based People's Association For Total Help and Youth Applause (Patheya) - selected for the job, would blow whistles in every area to inform residents that they have arrived.

Initially, the sanitation staff associated with the two agencies will knock on every door in their designated circles to collect the garbage from residents. In the later phase, residents will have to come out with the waste once they hear the whistle and they will have to hand it over to the sanitation staff. While Patheya has to execute the programme in the New Capital circle, Nishka is supposed to look after the work in Bankipore and Kankerbagh circles of the PMC.

The PMC has fixed a monthly user charge for the door-to-door garbage collection. While normal households will have to pay Rs 60 monthly, owners of small shops and commercial establishments have to pay something between Rs 300 and Rs 10,000.

PMC commissioner Abhishek Singh said residents and owners of the commercial establishments can't evade the user charges. The agencies are supposed to carry out the work from 6am to 2pm.

"While they have to collect garbage from normal households from 6am to 9am, from small shops garbage has to be collected from 9am to 11am and from 11am to 2pm the garbage has to be collected from big shops, hotels, hospitals among other big establishments," said Singh.

He said the agencies are supposed to collect garbage from door to door but they have to dump the waste in PMC dustbins across the city.

"The PMC has to ensure that the garbage dumped by the two agencies is removed from the bins and disposed at the Ramjchak Bairia site. The PMC has to ensure that the garbage is lifted from the bins between 6am and 2pm apart from other works such as sweeping. In night shifts, we have decided to get the important roads cleaned up by our PMC staff between 3pm and 11pm," added Singh.

The sanitation staff, who would go to collect the garbage from door-to-door, will be in uniforms and will have identity cards. As far as payment is concerned, they will visit people with receipts generated by the PMC at month-end.

"The best part of the programme is that in case residents report that the garbage has not been collected from their ward or we find out that the work has not been done in some areas, there is a norm of imposing a penalty between Rs 1,000 and Rs 5,000 on every case reported against the private agency," Singh said.

The private agencies have been hired for three years. In the first year, the corporation will provide Rs 7.5 crore monetary assistance to each agency.

In the second and third year, the private agencies have to provide the PMC Rs 2.5 and Rs 2 crore respectively.

Singh said the money would be released to the agencies in the first year only after the PMC is satisfied with their work. While inaugurating the garbage-collection programme, minister Hazari suggested that the urban development and housing department officials should constitute a team to monitor the work of the agencies.

Ragini Ranjan, the director of Nishka Intelligence and Security Services, said her agency had engaged 200 sanitation staff to carry out the garbage collection from 23 wards of Bankipore and Kankerbagh circle.