The Hindu Business Line : Chennai and its clean-up brigade

It's almost two years since CES Onyx took upon the task of keeping parts of Chennai clean. Santhosh Malliah looks at how its services have given the residents of the city something to cheer about.

CES Onyx personnel at work in Chennai.
Picture by Shaju John

Every morning, some parts of Chennai wake up to a now familiar scene. Uniformed men assemble in street corners, in tree-lined avenues and on side-walks. Any early office-goer or fitness aficionado will notice, they are sprucing up the streets.

Instantly recognisable by their distinctive grey-coloured uniforms, tall brushes, rakes, shovels, the men from CES Onyx prepare the metro for the bustling day ahead. For nearly two years now, Chennai has witnessed an effective cleanliness and garbage disposal initiative that has won the approval of its residents. Gone are the days when heaps of trash lay piled in every street corner, untended for days. When languid corporation workers made their haphazard cleaning rounds through the city's trash-ridden residential locales. When cleanliness was limited to the precincts of city homes.

But today, thanks to an ambitious initiative of the Corporation of Chennai, the city has a dynamic garbage disposal system.

It all started when the Corporation of Chennai presented global tenders inviting global garbage disposal companies to take over the cleaning up of the city. As a result, on the March 5, 2000 CES Onyx, a subsidiary of the Onyx Asia Holdings, introduced its garbage collection and disposal initiative into the Chennai urbanscape. Since then, the company has steadily built itself a reputation for maintaining cleanliness in the city.

CES Onyx is a part of Vivendi Environment, a French multinational and one of the world's leading operators in municipal and industrial waste management. Vivendi Environment has global interests in transportation, water, communication and energy. In India, CES Onyx also has the expertise in providing waste management solutions for sectors such as agriculture, automobile, electronics, chemical, pharmaceutical, public conveyance and petrochemical industries.

In India, the Chennai Corporation has initiated a pioneering move by privatising garbage collection. Through this initiative the corporation managed to bring in global standards in the removal of garbage from the streets of Chennai. The activities include, sweeping, collection, storing, transporting, disposal and creating awareness. Through these steps the company removes a minimum of 1,000 tonnes of garbage every day from its allotted zones within the city.

As per corporation guidelines, Chennai is divided into 10 zones. With the privatisation of garbage disposal, CES Onyx has been allotted three key zones in the city. These zones are further broken down into smaller sectors for better operation.

Looking at it in numbers can be quite impressive. It is estimated that through CES Onyx a population of 2.3 million people are served per day and an average length of 712 km is swept everyday. In these zones the company employs over 2,038 employees for its operations. It also has a mobile fleet of nearly 1,052 vehicles, which include compactor trucks, hook lift trucks, autorickshaws, modified bicycles, applied sweepers, sanitation vehicles and bobcats. With an impeccable chain of command, the company works to ensure speedy delivery of service along with an optimal utilisation of manpower and machinery.

Every street has an assigned method of cleaning which is performed by a hierarchy of staff. There are those who move about on bicycle fitted with bins, and others who move about in motorised vehicles ranging from load bearing autorickshaws to full-fledged trucks. Bicycle teams are allocated the work of sweeping the roads and picking loose litter, while bigger vehicles are used for collecting the waste. Garbage pickup vehicles are used depending on the size of the roads. For instance, compactor trucks are used only on broad roads, while smaller vehicles such as autorickshaws are used on narrow roads due to their manoeuvrability. And then there are the sector supervisors who ensure that garbage collection takes place on every street without fail.

For better communication sector, supervisors are also equipped with radio transmitters that help them stay in contact with the zone managers.

CES Onyx maintains an intermediary stage between garbage collection and disposal. After the garbage is removed from the streets, it is moved into a temporary place from where it is finally moved to the landfill. In Chennai, the company uses two transfer stations where garbage from the streets are temporarily stored. Here, the garbage is shifted to huge hippo trucks that make the final journey to the landfill.

Talking about the fleet of mechanised vehicles, the company maintains two depots that house the administrative block and workshops for vehicle maintenance. Independent workshops take care of all tinkering, painting, oiling greasing tyre servicing washing among other maintenance measures.

Interestingly, all employees are provided with locker and store room facilities for their uniforms and tools. Employees at CES Onyx are also covered with social securities such as ESI, PF etc. making them eligible for benefits like the all other employees. In addition to the uniforms, the employees are also provided with shoes, protective gloves, caps and raincoats to enable them to work even in harsh weather conditions.

Smaller aspects such as providing uniforms with reflectors for safety during nights have also been taken care of. With the view of serving the public better the company has also provided a toll free number (1600 334466) for complaints relating to garbage disposal. As soon as a complaint is lodged it is stored in the system, after which it is passed on to the concerned sector supervisor. All complaints are looked in to within 24 hours.

Reviewing the garbage disposal system in retrospect, until the privatisation of this sector, garbage cleaning has always remained a menial task. Now, offering the public the toll free number clearly sets new standards of productivity in this sector. Now, one can compare the difference visible in the privatised zones with that of those that fall under the corporation's scrutiny.

In fact, the coming of Onyx here in India, signifies a new era where utmost productivity is the watch word. The company has been awarded a contract by the corporation for a period of seven years. Though, initially this contract extends only in solid waste disposal from three zones in the city it could further extend to cover the entire city.

Though the entry of CES Onyx in the city was received with much criticism, today it stands out as one of the most productive private sector agencies. Having witnessed beneficial results the corporation could also look into privatising of sewerage disposal, which has been posing a huge problem in the city for a very long time now. For the last two years, three zones in Chennai have witnessed a considerable development in solid waste disposal. Despite apprehensions, this Chennai-city initiative has proved to be a veritable success. Now the rest of India awaits to follow the successful steps.

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