A garbage bin on the roadside of Forest Park in Bhubaneswar. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, Feb. 10: Lack of garbage bins in the city is forcing residents to throw litter on roads.

Though both Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation and a private organisation, which also takes care of the city’s cleanliness, claimed that garbage bins were in place at most of the wards, they agreed that things would change once the new tender for installing more containers is implemented.

Sources said that most of the bins were either old, damaged or had developed problems. “Those placed at market places have been damaged. Most of the existing ones can be seen in VIP areas, where people hardly use them,” said Nayapalli resident Santosh Sahu.

Residents, worried over the problem of garbage spilling on roads in their areas, complained that the authorities should bring the unused bins from the VIP areas and put them at places where more garbage was generated.

According to the tender held in 2010, when the number of wards was 60, the private body, Jagruti, cleans 40 wards, while the corporation takes care of 20.

In November last, the civic body finalised a new tender with three private parties to carry out sanitation and cleanliness drives in the city. It was supposed to be implemented by January 6, but could not be put into action till date due to certain procedural delays.

However, the new tender did not take into that the number of wards has increased to 67. Of 60 wards, 52 have been declared sanitation wards and have been brought under private control. It has been divided into four zones — two to be handled by Jagruti, while a Hyderabad-based company and a local agency will be managing one each.

Jagruti owner Subhendu Mohapatra said they had bought the bins and large containers to set up in their wards. “We have bought all the equipment, including the garbage bins. Once the process gets final nod, we will start work,” said Mohapatra.

The private parties have bought three types of bins. The plastic bins having capacity of 120 litres would be provided to the cleaners to carry with them while cleaning roads and picking up garbage.

The iron bins of 1,100 litres each would be placed at market places and where more garbage is generated. Besides, dumper placer bins, made of iron, having a capacity of 3.5 cubic metres would be placed at places that generate huge amount of garbage.

“The new bins will replace the concrete and small containers in private wards,” said an agency official.

According to the new tender, the private parties would spend around Rs 2,450 per tonne of garbage collected. “The equipment and manpower will be ours. We are waiting for implementation which we are expecting to do by the middle of March,” said an official. A corporation official said they were trying to give green signal to the project as soon as possible.