Patna Municipal Corporation has approved the appointment of two private agencies to manage door-to-door waste collection and sanitation services across the city’s six municipal zones, while retaining about 9,600 existing sanitation workers on the agencies’ payrolls.
The decision was among 20 agendas approved at the 13th ordinary meeting of the Patna Municipal Council on Saturday. Each agency will be assigned three zones and will be responsible for waste collection, segregation, transportation to processing plants, road and lane cleaning, removal of garbage from vulnerable points and responses to sanitation complaints received through the civic body’s control room.
PMC officials said the agencies would be required to absorb nearly 9,600 sanitation workers currently engaged in civic cleaning activities. Permanent sanitation workers employed directly by the corporation will be assigned other duties. According to the civic body, the arrangement is intended to improve monitoring and accountability while ensuring that retained workers receive wages and service benefits in accordance with labour laws.
The proposed restructuring places the agencies at the centre of the city’s routine sanitation chain, from collection at households to movement of waste to processing facilities. It also assigns them responsibility for street-level cleaning and complaint response, functions that directly shape how residents experience municipal services. The source report did not specify the names of the agencies, the contract period, the performance standards or the mechanism through which their work will be monitored.
PMC estimates that the new system will save more than Rs 30 crore annually. The financial calculation and the corporation’s method for measuring the savings were not detailed in the report. The civic body also did not specify whether the projected savings would be linked to payment milestones, service-level performance or changes in the existing sanitation arrangement.
The decision comes alongside several other urban-development and municipal-finance approvals. The council cleared an agreement with NBCC (India) Ltd to develop vending zones and commercial complexes at 15 locations using around Rs 200 crore raised through municipal bonds. The projects are intended to create organised spaces for street vendors and generate additional revenue for the corporation.
In another decision, the council removed the G+3 construction cap on PMC leasehold properties in Sri Krishnapuri and Rajendra Nagar. Future construction on these properties will remain subject to building bylaws and other statutory provisions, according to the report.
The meeting also approved proposals concerning borewell installation, the coupon rate on municipal bonds and projects related to Chhath. The sanitation-agency arrangement, however, is the decision with the most immediate operational impact across all six municipal zones because it changes who will be responsible for collection, cleaning, waste transport and complaint handling.
The next steps are the appointment of the two agencies and the transfer or absorption of the existing sanitation workforce under the approved arrangement. PMC is expected to implement the system while retaining permanent corporation workers for duties to be assigned separately.
