Chennai: The Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) has invited bids to supply cloth bags to 105 vending machines across 17 districts under a one-year contract valued at ₹67 lakh.As a continuation of the state govt’s ‘Meendum Manjappai’ scheme launched in 2021 to enforce the blanket ban on single-use plastics, the bags will be supplied at ₹5 throughout. While bags from a few vending machines are available in yellow colour, the tender documents call for the bidder to provide all the bags in off-white colour with 110 GSM quality.The bidder must incur the costs of operating and maintaining the vending machines, refilling the bags, making weekly inspections and running service centres. They must oversee the cloth-bag quality and administrative costs, including recruitment, training and payment of salaries to service personnel. They must supply a weekly report on the supply of bags through and the repair works undertaken to the TNPCB’s corporate office and district offices every week. Additionally, if any of the vending machines are not working up to a week, the agency should replace the set up at its own risk.“The Agency shall also create a common monitoring portal to monitor operation and maintenance and refill. The exact count of the cloth bags in the vending machine and in the display must be the same,” the tender documents said.Chennai is the major beneficiary of the scheme as 51 of the 105 vending machines are based in the city, including beaches and vegetable markets. “We are also checking the offtake at several places where the machines are deployed. We will increase the number of machines wherever needed. The Board is also planning to set up such machines at other districts,” an official with the TNPCB said.To apply for the tender, the agency should have annual turnover of ₹20 lakh in any of the last three financial years and must have experience in handling cloth bag vending machines or similar types of machines in the state.
