Council to honour contract - The Star

May 1, 2008 By DERRICK VINESH

THE Seberang Prai Municipal Council will honour an ongoing contract with a private company to carry out solid waste management in Seberang Prai.

Council president Farizan Darus said the contract, which was first signed in 2001, and later renewed in 2005, would expire only in December next year.

“However, we may have to review the contract, if the Federal Government decides to take over solid waste management before the contract’s expiry date,” he said after chairing a full council meeting in Bukit Mertajam yesterday.

Last week, former Jawi assemblyman Tan Cheng Liang said the council should use an open tender system to select competent companies to handle solid waste management and garbage collection.

She said through an open tender, the council could obtain the best proposals to do the job more effectively and efficiently.

Farizan said he supported an open tender system, noting that the new state government had also asked that all of the council’s procurement be done through open tender.

“Except for the appointment of the private company to handle solid waste management, we have practised an open tender system for all other contractual work valued at RM200,000 and above, including for garbage collection.

“The present 55 garbage collection contractors in Seberang Prai were all selected through open tender,” he said.

But beginning this month, he said, the council would display the details of the successful contract bidders for two weeks at the council’s headquarters for objection from fellow bidders.

The move, which was recommended by the state government, he said, was to ensure that bankrupt or blacklisted companies were not picked.

“The original two-year renewable contract was also recently re-vised to a month-to-month renewable basis.

“Their contracts will be renewed based on their performances,” he said, adding that two contractors had been fined for poor performance.

Farizan said although Parliament had passed the Solid Waste and Public Cleansing Management Bill 2007 and the Solid Waste and Pu-blic Management Corporation Bill 2007 last July, the bills were yet to be gazetted.

Once gazetted, he said the bills would result in the setting-up of a National Solid Waste Management Department as the regulatory body and a Solid Waste Management Corporation to conduct the operations.

The corporation would then take over the role of managing solid waste from the local authorities, including undertaking garbage collection, road cleaning, grass cutting and drain sweeping.