Gurugram MC to issue fresh notice to terminate contract with Ecogreen

The Gurugram Municipal Corporation (MC) has drafted a fresh notice to terminate the contract with solid waste management concessionaire Ecogreen. It will issue the notice after formal approval from the state government.

The Punjab and Haryana High Court found lapses in the termination notice served upon the company early this year. After observations made by the court, the MC withdrew the notice. The civic body gave an undertaking in the court that it would follow all rules and regulations before issuing a fresh termination notice by granting 60 days to the firm for filing a proper reply.

A Division Bench of the HC had observed, “The said termination notice be deemed to have been recalled/withdrawn. For the competent authority shall now issue a fresh notice of termination, in terms of the relevant clauses of the contract, and thereafter, proceed further with the matter, in accordance with law”.

MC Joint Commissioner (Swatch Bharat) Akhilesh Yadav said the civic body had drafted a fresh termination notice. It had been sent to the Urban Local Bodies (ULB) Department to seek formal approval from the government.

According to the draft, Ecogreen ceased its door-to-door waste collection operations, collection and transportation of waste from secondary collection points, failed to process legacy waste at Bandhwari landfill site and could not do leachete treatment properly causing damage to the local environment.

Civic body officials, in their surveys, had found that after signing the contract with the MC in August 2017, Ecogreen failed to cover 100 per cent households for door-to-door waste collection, recycle collected waste, segregate waste at source and work continuously for seven days in a week.

The agreement with the MC mandated Ecogreen to achieve these targets. The waste, according to MC officials, was disposed of in an unorganised manner on the designated land, which led to the accumulation of legacy waste over these years.

“We decided to issue the notice of termination due to breach of the agreement by the concessionaire,” Yadav said, adding that residents of Gurugram suffered a lot because of the insensitive attitude of the company.

MC officials claimed that the National Green Tribunal had to intervene to address the problem of legacy waste accumulated at Bandhwari landfill site due to the alleged lapses of the waste management concessionaire company.