MCD to rope in private players for sanitation works in schools

Unhappy with its sanitation staff and their way of functioning, the MCD has decided to privatise sanitation works in some of its schools. HT reports.

Unhappy with its sanitation staff and their way of functioning, the MCD has decided to privatise sanitation works in some of its schools.

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According to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) they are planning to privatise sanitation work in two of its zones — Shahdara (south) and Shahdara (north) — as a pilot project. Depending on the success of the project, the same model will be applied to other MCD schools as well.

“We have identified 80-odd schools, where sanitation work will be entrusted to private players for six months on a pilot project basis. The Delhi high court-appointed monitoring committee and the MCD had inspected a number of schools. Most of them were found to be unclean. There was shortage of sanitation workers as well. We have already recruited 790 sanitation workers,” said Mahender Nagpal, chairman of the MCD’s education committee.

Private players will takeover the sanitation work in the schools identified by the MCD from the coming academic year.

“We have earmarked a sum of R50 lakh for this purpose. The matter was discussed in the education committee’s budget meeting,” he added.

The MCD is currently running 1,746 primary schools with an enrolment of nearly 9.5 lakh children. It also runs attached nursery classes in 923 primary schools along with 33 independent schools with an enrolment of 50,000 children. The civic agency also has 44 aided primary schools and 728 recognised primary schools managed by voluntary organisations.