KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 2 ― The Selangor government has started a pilot project in Klang to monitor garbage collection in a bid to end the state’s long-running waste management problems.
A state firm, KDEB Waste Management Sdn Bhd, took over on July 1 the management of garbage collection from the Klang Municipal Council (MPK). Although KDEB Waste Management will not act as a garbage collector, the firm will appoint monitors and managers to ensure that subcontractors, appointed via open tender, are effectively collecting household garbage across the state.
This means the annual garbage collection allocation for MPK will now be given to KDEB Waste Management instead, who will specifically use it to run a command centre that will handle complaints on uncollected garbage, and also do real time tracking of garbage compactors and even on their ground supervisors.
“We are not an Alam Flora equivalent. We are not involved in collection at all; what we are doing is just managing contractors, while abiding to the same principles of open tender,” Smart Selangor delivery unit deputy programme director Dr Fahmi Ngah, who oversees the monitoring process, told Malay Mail Online.
“For example, in the Alam Flora model, if they are given RM20 million, they would take 20 percent of the payment and the rest will go to contractors. In our case, we take the money, and all of it is passed to the contractors. We are just a pass through entity,” the official of the Selangor state agency added, referring to the federal waste management concessionaire.
Under the previous administration of Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim, the state did away with Alam Flora’s statewide garbage collection concession and instead began appointing their own contractors through an open tender process, with all of them monitored by respective local councils.
However, the move that began in January 2012 was plagued with problems as reports of uncollected garbage persisted over the years, especially in low income household areas. The state had previously blamed incompetent contractors and also acts of sabotage by outgoing contractors behind the uncollected garbage problem.
“What is different (with this new initiative) is that the state has direct monitoring of the contractors,” Fahmi said.
This starts with the “uniformity” of all garbage collection lorries and the workers. Fahmi said that the state will now buy big compactor lorries and lease them out to contractors, instead of contractors having to buy the lorries themselves.
“Normally the tenure of the contract is short, so banks are apprehensive to give such large loans, so it is a tricky process,” he said.
This, he said, resulted in contractors not buying new lorries to carry out their garbage collection duties and also produced “bad” contractors.
“Previously, it becomes very unjust to them if we decide to terminate their contract because they still have a loan that they have to pay for,” he said.
Under the new move, the state would be able to terminate the services of any contractor because the compactors would belong to the state. To this end, 60 new lorries have been purchased for garbage collection in Klang alone, and they are expected to be rolled out in mid-August.
“The lorries have vehicle trackers on them, which means I can monitor their movements in real time from the command centre. KDEB had also deployed 25 on ground supervisors in Klang. So every time a lorry passes by your housing estate, an hour later, these supervisors will go and do their rounds to determine if the collection was done,” he said.
The state is also adding another layer of governance ― trackers are tagged onto supervisors so that their movement is monitored.
“So there’s no more cheating. The lorries can’t cheat me anymore because they will be checked by my supervisors, and my supervisors can’t cheat me either,” Fahmi said.
If the results are “encouraging”, the state intends to implement a similar system in other local councils progressively by the end of the year.
The move has minimal extra cost for the state. MPK’s previous allocation for garbage collection management was between RM20 million and RM21 million a year. This budget, with a little extra, has been given to KDEB for waste management in Klang.
“We were given slightly extra, in the region of RM24 million, but it’s the same budget they used to allocate for the local council,” Fahmi said.
Fahmi also rebutted Housing, Local Government and Urban Well Being Minister Tan Sri Noh Omar, who recently flayed the state for the garbage collection problems and for their refusal to use Alam Flora.
“We have tried Alam Flora from 2008 (to 2011) and that did not benefit the state,” Fahmi said.
“We don’t even need RM2.2 billion to carry out waste collection,” he added, referring to Noh’s remarks that the state would be entitled to part of Putrajaya’s annual RM2.2 billion garbage collection allocation should the federal-appointed concessionaire be used.
“What we are doing is empowering the local councils, and we believe things will be better with this new model. We have our solutions,” Fahmi said.
