The Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) on Tuesday floated a six-month tender worth ₹22.5 crore for door-to-door garbage collection across all eight municipal zones, extending its reliance on stopgap arrangements after a proposed five-year waste collection contract worth ₹606 crore was put on hold.The city has relied on temporary arrangements since terminating its previous contractor in June 2024 over alleged poor performance. (HT Archive)The long-term tender was stalled earlier this month after the Haryana government’s high-powered purchase committee (HPPC), chaired by chief minister Nayab Singh Saini, declined to approve the rates quoted by participating agencies. Following the decision, MCG said the project would be re-tendered.According to the fresh tender, separate bids have been invited for each of the eight zones. The estimated tender value is ₹1.78 crore for Zone 1, ₹4.76 crore for Zone 2, ₹4.15 crore for Zone 3, ₹1.56 crore for Zone 4, ₹2.90 crore for Zone 5, ₹2.02 crore for Zone 6, ₹3.81 crore for Zone 7 and ₹1.52 crore for Zone 8.Tender conditions state that one agency will be selected for each zone, but no bidder will be awarded contracts for more than two zones, irrespective of the number of successful bids, to prevent concentration of work with a single contractor.A senior MCG official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the six-month tender is valued significantly lower because its scope is narrower than the proposed five-year contract.“The current tender is worth ₹22.5 crore as certain components, including parts of the waste segregation process, have been excluded. This is only a stopgap arrangement to ensure door-to-door collection and transportation of waste until the long-term contract is finalised,” the official said.To be sure, the proposed five-year contract was valued at ₹606 crore, translating to roughly ₹60 crore for a six-month period, nearly three times the value of the interim arrangement.As per the request for proposals (RFPs), the contract period will be 180 days or until the long-term tender is finalised, whichever is earlier. The fresh tender assumes significance as the current stopgap arrangement for doorstep waste collection, awarded for the January-June period, is set to expire on June 30.Explaining the delay, Ravinder Yadav, additional commissioner of the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG), said the civic body had expected the five-year contract to become operational by now. “Since the five-year tender had been approved, we anticipated that it would replace the stopgap arrangement. However, after the process was halted, we had to initiate another short-term tender. A fresh tender will now be floated for the five years,” he said.Officials said selected firms will handle door-to-door collection from residential, commercial, institutional and informal establishments; segregation of waste; and transportation to the processing site at Bandhwari landfill.The city has witnessed repeated changes in its waste collection system since MCG terminated the previous contractor’s contract in June 2024 over alleged poor performance. Despite fresh tenders, approvals and pre-bid meetings over the past two years, Gurugram is yet to secure a permanent door-to-door waste collection arrangement.