All done except revised wages: Minister on 18-month waste tender delay in Gurgaon

Gurgaon: More than 18 months after the city’s door-to-door waste collection system fell into uncertainty, the Haryana govt is yet to hire an agency for the job. When asked about the delays and tender revisions, Haryana Urban Local Bodies (ULB) minister Vipul Goel said the tender is currently under process.When TOI asked about the long timeline, over one-and-a-half years, and multiple rewrites of the Request for Proposal (RFP), the minister attributed the hold-up to recent wage hikes. “The wages have increased, which need to be incorporated. The Haryana govt has increased these in the budget and implemented them. So naturally, they will be included in this tender,” he said, maintaining that apart from incorporating revised wages, everything else in the door-to-door collection plan was in order.TOI reported on April 9 that the MCG was forced to scrap its ongoing bidding process for the Rs 315.2-crore project after the ULB department revised the RFP for the sixth time. Each revision has changed key aspects of the tender, including eligibility criteria and financial structures, which has put the process back at the start.The civic body is now preparing yet another revised cost estimate before fresh tenders can be floated, further delaying implementation of a unified waste collection system. “We have prepared an estimate of around Rs 700 crore for the city’s door-to-door waste collection for five years. The cost has escalated because of the increase in number of vehicles to around 700 vehicles. We will send it to the ULB by the end of day,” said MCG commissioner Pradeep Dahiya.The continued delay has left the city dependent on temporary and often unreliable waste collection arrangements since the termination of its previous contractor in June 2024.With no clear timeline, the gap between policy assurances and on-ground reality continues to widen, leaving residents to grapple with the consequences of a system that remains stuck in perpetual revision.