Haryana’s first Integrated Solid Waste Management Project has apparently failed to live up to expectations in Gurugram with city residents crying foul over irregular and improper garbage collection by Ecogreen Energy, a subsidiary of a Chinese company.

Besides irregular collection and improper disposal of waste, Gurugram
residents allege that less than the required number of employees has been hired by Ecogreen. They not only skip several houses during the door-to-door collection but also lack the willingness to coordinate with the respective Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) for better disposal of garbage, they said.

“The company (Ecogreen) is not providing a good service at all. As garbage is not being collected regularly, people have started to throw the same in the open which causing even more problems. Ecogreen should have contacted the people of the particular area for coordination between garbage collectors and residents,” said president of the Sector 46 RWA, Raj Kumar Yadav.

An executive member of Sector-17 B RWA, BS Yadav, said the new system for collecting garbage in Gurugram is a defective system.

A private sector employee in Gurugram, Ganesh, said a private garbage collector comes to his house these days. “But sometimes we face problems as he (garbage collector) does not listen to us (when asked to do his job properly,” he said.

Some residents allege that while the garbage collection is irregular, they are asked to pay the full user charges (up to Rs 100 per flat) for the month.
A couple of RWAs, however, expressed their satisfaction with the service being provided by Ecogreen. A resident of Sector-43, Gurugram, Air Vice Marshal Bopa Rai (Retd) said earlier there was an issue over whether the garbage collector would come but now garbage collection has become regular.

A member of DLF Pink Town Resident Welfare Association, Jay Kumar, said EcoGreen is providing good service in the area. “Earlier, garbage was dumped in the open, but now the problem has been solved. Now, there is no dumping of garbage in the open,” he said.

The principal secretary, Urban Local Bodies of Haryana government, Anand Mohan Sharan, said the idea is to undertake garbage collection in an “ideal manner” but it will take a little time for everything to settle down.

“To make garbage collection foolproof, we are coming up with an IT-enabled control centre which will help in tracking garbage collection through GPS. With it, we will get to know even if the garbage is not collected from a single house,” Saran told The Statesman.

He said this project is not just about garbage collection, it includes segregation, transport and converting waste to energy.Ecogreen has been given the contract till 2039 through global tender.In order to generate energy from waste, a plant would be set up under this project, which would generate at least 100 MW (megawatt) of electricity daily.

“It’s a Rs 430 crore project. For ensuring the viability of the project, it had to be a long-term project. By June 2019, the plant will be set up. Then we will have the system in place. By and large, it’s working fine at the moment, but it will take time to stabilise,” he added.

The general manager, Ecogreen, Rajesh Kruk, expressed surprise at complaints regarding irregular and improper garbage collection.

“Earlier, garbage was collected in an unorganised manner. Now we have deployed workers for collecting garbage and we send it for disposal to a proper landfill site. You will not find garbage scattered on roadsides. If anyone has a problem, we are ready to look into it. The efficiency of the garbage collection system will improve gradually,” he told The Statesman.

The senior manager (operations) EcoGreen, Ravi Trivedi, said the company has an effective complaint redressal system. “We attend to people’s complaints within 24 hours. We have deployed around 260vehicles along with 700-800 workers for garbage collection in the Gurugram area which we have covered. We will be deploying 150 more vehicles to collect garbage from the remaining areas,” he said.

Speaking to The Statesman, the commissioner, Municipal Corporation, Gurugram, Yashpal Yadav said garbage collection was earlier done in an unorganised manner. Valuable items from the garbage were regregated and sold off and the garbage that was left used to be dumped in any public area, he said.

“Due to this problem, ensuring cleanliness had become a major issue. Some people say the performance of the company undertaking garbage collection is not satisfactory. I agree with them. There is need for improvement. We expect improvement in their performance within a period of 12 months as they had promised us,” Yadav added.

Ecogreen Energy, a waste management and a waste to energy company in India, is an ultimate subsidiary of China Jinjiang Environment Holding Company Limited (CJE). CJE has over 41 waste to energy plants in China with daily waste handling capacity of 44,000+ tonnes. They have also been tasked with garbage collection in Faridabad.