City hall will hold a bidding process for waste management.

Valter Lima, from Sergipe 247 - The city hall of Aracaju announced yesterday, in a press conference, that it will hold a bidding process for the city's public cleaning services. The tender will be launched at the end of May. Prior to that, a public hearing will be held to discuss the details of the proposal with the community. The Secretary of the Environment, Eduardo Matos, informed that the contract term is five years. He also said that the bidding will be conducted through a public tender, based on the lowest price, valid for companies throughout the country. Currently, the Aracaju City Hall spends an average of R$ 2,8 million per year on public cleaning services.

The current contract between the city hall and Torre in this sector is nearing its end. If interested, the company may participate in the new bidding process. The contract covers all city cleaning services, from street sweeping and cleaning of public spaces, sewage canals, and beaches to garbage collection. However, the bidding process does not include the final stage, currently carried out by Estre, the company that owns the controlled landfill that receives all the city's waste. Another bidding process will be held later for this specific function.

“We want to have the most comprehensive bidding process possible for public cleaning services. Experiences in other cities show that when you expand the bidding process to the entire country, the tendency is to receive better proposals,” stated Eduardo Matos, who declined to reveal details of the tender process yet. “We have a draft of the proposal. Next week we will be assembling a commission with permanent staff from the Environment and Planning departments to study a model and present a suggestion at the public hearing on May 7th,” he explained.

The public hearing will take place at the Presidente Vargas School, in the Siqueira Campos neighborhood. Following this, the city hall will analyze the suggestions made by those present at the meeting and forward them to the Municipal Attorney General for review. After that, the bidding process will be finalized and launched on May 25th. The bidding will then take place on July 2nd. The competition will consider the lowest-priced proposals.

Reform

In the press conference, Eduardo Matos highlighted that the recent administrative reform, which concentrated all cleaning-related services in the Environment Secretariat, was useful in streamlining the sector's operations. “Now the secretariat oversees, licenses, and performs the cleaning. Administrative logic has prevailed, as only one body will handle the entire service,” he stated. The current contract with Torre is still being managed by Emsurb (a company that will be dissolved). “Current contracts are managed by the indirect administration, by Emsurb. With the reform, they will become part of the direct administration,” he explained.