Mumbai: BMC invites tender for sewer management

Mumbai: The BMC has invited a tender to appoint an agency for the maintenance of three quick response vehicles (QRV) to immediately attend to complaints regarding sewers for the next five years. Earlier, the vehicles were being operated by the suppliers. The estimated cost of the project is Rs 15 crore.

The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, prohibits the manual cleaning of sewers and septic tanks without protective equipment and the construction of insanitary latrines. It also mandates that the local civic authorities deploy advanced technologies to clean sewers.

Before the BMC deployed the QRVs, workers had to attend to sewer complaints by loading jetting pumps, water tanks, power-rodding machines and submersible pumps onto a vehicle and then carry them to the spot. This would result in delays in the repair work.

So the BMC brought in the QRVs in 2018, which have all the required equipment, along with a generator, lights and a CCTV camera.

“The QRVs attend to sewer complaints as well as emergencies like overflow due to choked sewer lines,” said a civic official of the sewage operation department. The three vehicles – one each for the city, the eastern and western suburbs – will be deployed in two shifts.