GURGAON: Hinting at the termination of its contract with its solid waste management concessionaire Ecogreen, MCG has sent a recommendation letter to the state government. The urban local bodies (ULB) department had sent a letter to MCG on September 22 observing that Ecogreen had failed to carry out 100% doorstep waste collection, 100% waste segregation and 80% recycling of waste collected in Gurgaon and Faridabad. In its nine-point reply to the observations on Wednesday, MCG agreed that the concessionaire has failed on every front and didnt meet any of the targets set for it in its agreement.According to MCGs response (a copy of which is with TOI), Ecogreen was engaged six years ago, but is yet to achieve 100% door-to-door collection. It should have also achieved 100% waste segregation at source within six months of signing the agreement. The segregation level achieved so far, however, is just 40%, an MCG official said.The ULB department had also sought information on whether Ecogreen failed to collect waste for seven consecutive days on any occasion, since it would be considered an "event of default" as per the agreement. To this, MCG replied that there were several occasions on which the concessionaire did not collect waste for seven days in a row."We have already sent a recommendation to terminate the contract with Ecogreen to the ULB department. It recently shared observations on solid waste management and sought certain details from us. The exchange between the department and MCG is currently going on but no final decision has been taken yet," said a senior MCG official privy to the matter.When contacted by TOI, Ecogreen refused to comment on the matter. A representative said they have received no official communication.In its letter, the ULB department had also asked whether the concessionaire has achieved the objective of resolving 80% of public complaints within nine months of signing the agreement. "The concessionaire has not achieved the target yet, as many complaints have been unattended for a long time. It is also not collecting door-to-door waste in the entire project area," read the reply sent by MCG.On achieving the target of recycling 80% of waste within a year of signing the contract, the civic body stated in the report that Ecogreen did not meet the target and is only recovering valuables from only 15% of the solid waste, while the remaining 85% mixed waste is being transported to the landfill in Bandhwari.According to civic body officials, an agreement was signed by the ULB department, the municipal corporations of Gurgaon and Faridabad (MCF), and Ecogreen on June 30, 2017 for solid waste management and setting up of a waste-to-energy (WTE) plant at Bandhwari at a cost of Rs 330 crore. On April 13, 2018, Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar had laid the foundation stone of the WTE plant. Ecogreen got environmental clearance for the project from the Union ministry of environment, forests and climate change in 2019 for a 15 MW plant. It had cited space constraints and the pandemic as the reasons for the delay in starting its work on the WTE plant at the landfill site. After MCG sought an action plan from the concessionaire for solid waste management earlier this year, it had claimed the plant will become operational by February 2024.The ULB department in its letter also sought details of the status of the WTE plant. On this, MCG has replied that no visible work on the plant has been done, except installation of two signboards. MCG in its reply also mentioned that Ecogreen hasnt lifted garbage regularly in the past few months, due to which mounds of garbage piled up in the city, tarnishing the reputation of the corporation. In November 2020, the MCG House had passed a resolution to cancel Ecogreens contract citing inefficiency in managing the citys waste and failure to set up the waste-to-energy plant. The resolution, however, was rejected by the Haryana government in December 2020.

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