CHENNAI CORPORATION: Neel Metal Fanalca gets government lifeline?

Source:http://expressbuzz.com/cities/chennai/neel-metal-fanalca-gets-government-lifeline/225211.html

By G Saravanan
Published in The New Indian Express on November 23, 2010:


CHENNAI: While the Corporation's planned recruitment of 5,887 conservancy staff to replace the sluggish Neel Metal Fanalca (NMF) has already hit bureaucratic hurdles, there are fresh reports that the plan has been put on hold due to various reasons.



Contrary to the Corporation's decision to pack NMF off by March 2011 owing to its poor performance from day one, and take over all operations, the State government has reportedly decided to allow it to continue its operations in the four zones under the civic body, sources said.
According to sources, top officials in the government were of the view that the abrupt sendoff to the private conservancy operator (NMF) from its four zones (3, 6, 8 and 10) would send a wrong signal among the locals and could be construed as the civic body's inability to "utilise" them properly.
While Corporation's official sources said they were awaiting the State government's nod to complete the recruitment process, it has been learnt that the 'decision' to put everything on hold was taken at the 'highest level', reportedly after several adverse reports of massive irregularities by a few ruling party councillors were received.



A civic body staff told Express that a few ruling party and influential councillors at the Corporation had allegedly collected 'facilitation charges' from hundreds of candidates selected from the 25,000 interviewed in September to confirm their appointment.
He said the action was taken after the stench of mass collection reached their political bosses.
A sitting councillor, requesting anonymity, said, "Though the civic body passed a resolution for mass recruitment last May, the delay in getting the government's nod shows that something has gone wrong in the process."
The Corporation council monthly meetings never failed to highlight the problems of NMF. It was then decided in May to recruit 5,887 new staff to take over NMF's zones in a phased manner.
If the reported freeze on recruitment turns out to be true, then 3,000-odd conservancy staff with the NMF will heave a sigh of relief.

DEAL WITH NMF:
As per the seven-year agreement with the Corporation since April 2008, NMF will remove garbage in four zones of the Corporation under two packages. The first package comprises Triplicane (zone-6) and Adyar (zone-10) and the garbage is cleared for Rs 673 per metric tonne. And the second package comprises Kodambakkam (zone-8) and Pulianthope (zone-3) in which the garbage is cleared for Rs 642 per metric tonne. On an average, NMF removes about 1400 Metric tones of garbage everyday from these four zones.