With the Bombay high court granting an extension for the use of Euro-III vehicles for garbage collection till the end of this year, the BMC has been spared major embarrassment.
As per the HC order in 2010, the Centre had decided to implement Bharat Stage IV (Euro-IV) emission norms in 13 cities. Accordingly, the BMC had to upgrade its garbage collection vehicles to environment friendly Euro-IV norms. However, since these vehicles were not available freely in the market, the BMC had requested the high court to grant it an extension till June 2013 to procure the vehicles. The HC has now extended the deadline to December.
Additional municipal commissioner Mohan Adtani said, “The HC has relaxed the deadline for the use of Euro-III vehicles till December this year. The manufacturers are facing problems to procure Euro-IV vehicles as some of their parts are not easily available in the market.”
However, as penalty to contractors for not procuring the vehicles on time, the civic body has decided to slash 35 per cent of the total rental amount. “We will pay them only 65 per cent of the vehicle’s rent,” said Mr Adtani.
According to civic officials, of the required 822 Euro-IV garbage compactors, 613 have been acquired so far. Of these, 244 (of the required 383) compactors are of 6.5 tonne load capacity, 215 (of 264) are of 2.5 tonne, and 154 (of 175) are one-tonne load compactors.
In February, BMC standing committee approved a proposal for acquiring the first batch of Euro-IV garbage compactors at a cost of `24.6 crore.
Mumbai produces 6,500 metric tonnes of waste daily.