Mapo-gu, Improvement of Monopolistic Practices in Household Waste Collection and Transportation

Why Did Mapo-gu Take Steps to Improve the Harmful Monopoly Practices in Household Waste Collection and Transportation?

Decrease in Waste Collection Complaints Due to Contractor Changes... Maintaining Emergency Response System for Normalization

Breaking Away from the Existing Monopoly System, Introducing Fair Competition to Lead Cleaning Administration Among Local Governments Nationwide

Establishing a Comprehensive Roadmap for Mapo-gu’s Household Waste Collection and Transportation Business to Create a Systematic Management System

Mapo-gu (Mayor Park Gang-su) announced that it is doing its best to stabilize the waste processing situation in the 4 zones (Ahyeon, Yeomni, Yonggang, Seongsan 1, Mangwon 1 and 2-dong), where waste collection was not smooth due to the change of the household waste collection and transportation contractor.

On the 1st, the contractor for the 4 zones was changed, and since proper cooperation for work handover with the previous contractor was not carried out, some waste collection was missed. In response, Mapo-gu activated an emergency system for household waste management, promptly instructed the new contractor to carry out the work, and strictly supervised and enforced regulations on overall collection.

As a result, the new contractor concentrated manpower and equipment mainly in areas where collection was insufficient, collecting all the garbage, leading to a trend of decreasing waste disposal complaints compared to last week.

Currently, Mapo-gu divides its 16 neighborhoods into 4 zones and processes household waste, food waste, and recyclable waste through contractors.

The cleaning outsourcing project has a total budget of 42.6 billion KRW over two years. Divided among the 4 zones, each contractor earns over 10 billion KRW in revenue over two years, making it a highly valuable business not to be missed. Because of this, price-fixing among bidding companies led to a monopoly by a few contractors for a long time, resulting in a decline in the quality of waste collection services and wasteful public spending, ultimately harming all residents.

In fact, last December, the Korea Fair Trade Commission’s investigation into bid-rigging in Mapo-gu’s household waste collection and transportation outsourcing revealed that four existing contractors colluded in the 2017 and 2019 bids, resulting in corrective orders and fines totaling 840 million KRW, which shocked the local community.

Park Gang-su, Mayor of Mapo District, visited a local garbage collection complaint site on the 6th and instructed prompt resolution.

Although competitive bidding was introduced during the 6th and 7th local government administrations, strict qualification requirements raised barriers for new companies to enter, causing the same contractors to be repeatedly selected and failing to overcome the monopoly problem inherent in negotiated contracts.

Mapo-gu’s fundamental reason for changing this year’s contractor selection method to “contract by negotiation,” despite temporary confusion caused by contractor changes, and for starting to comprehensively evaluate bidders’ proposals and prices through an expert evaluation committee, lies precisely in this issue.

A district official said, “We apologize to residents for the great inconvenience caused by waste disposal issues during this transitional period of improving long-standing contractor selection practices. We will conduct more meticulous guidance and supervision to quickly enhance the new contractor’s operational capacity and maintain a clean local environment without any gaps in waste collection.”

Furthermore, the district plans to establish a roadmap covering everything from the basic plan for Mapo-gu’s household waste collection and transportation business to the criteria and procedures for contractor selection, which will be used for future waste outsourcing contracts and business operations.

Park Gang-su, Mayor of Mapo-gu, said, “Household waste collection and disposal is the most direct and fundamental administration related to residents’ daily lives and economic activities, so it is essential to carefully select the right outsourcing contractor from the start. We will do our best to establish a fair and systematic framework for Mapo-gu’s household waste collection and transportation administration so that Mapo-gu’s cleaning administration can become a model case leading local governments nationwide.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.