With a total of seven STP tenders scrapped, the BMC claims to have invited tenders during next financial year for healthy competition, but sources say otherwise
The STPs under this project will take five to eight years to be completed. File pic
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has scrapped the tenders for constructing sewage treatment plants (STP) at Bandra and Worli and will be re-inviting fresh bidders for the next financial year (2020-2021).
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The civic body has already scrapped the tenders for five other STPs, and by cancelling these two, the entire project worth '20,000 crore has been put on hold till the next fiscal year. The STPs under this project is likely to take another five to eight years to be completed.
Although the BMC has claimed that the projects have been pushed ahead to invite more competition, sources have revealed that the low income in 2019-2020 is a major reason for the delay. The tenders for the construction of seven STPs to ensure that clean water enters the coastal waters, had been put up on the Maharashtra Portal for better response from contractors. Under the Mumbai Sewerage Disposal Project (MSDP)-2 civic body had planned to construct and upgrade seven STPs at Worli, Dharavi, Bandra, Bhandup, Ghatkopar, Versova and Malad for treating the sewerage and reusing the water.
However, the project which is estimated to cost civic body about '20,000 crore, is still at the tender documentation stage. Earlier, the civic officials accused the central government of delaying the project by not releasing the water discharge norms for over two years. However, once the norms were released, tenders were floated. Several corporators alleged that the conditions were drafted in such a way that only certain contractors would benefit and thus there would be less competition.
One of the civic officials on request of anonymity, said, "The retendering will be done at the earliest and it is being done to bring in more competition from big-time players as it is a big project and also the contractors need to have a huge turnover. We cancelled the tender in February itself without opening the bids for Worli and Bandra, which were due earlier this month."
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