Taking note of complaints by owners of commercial properties against addition of lump sum annual charges for door-to-door garbage collection in their property tax bills, the municipal corporation on Tuesday decided to delink them in financial year 2023-24.
Now, instead of annual bills, the commercial property owners will get the garbage charges with their bimonthly water bills. But commercial properties without water connections will receive separate garbage bill.
The decision was taken during a meeting at the MC office on Tuesday, held under the chairmanship of mayor Anup Gupta. It was attended by MC commissioner Anindita Mitra, MC officials, and various office-bearers of traders and industries associations of Chandigarh.
MC had started door-to-door garbage collection from commercial units from April 1 this year. The garbage is being collected from as many as 108 points, including all types of commercial establishments, shops, eating joints, spa, salons, general trade, etc. The charges ranged from ₹150 to ₹5,000 per month, depending on the size of the establishment.
Since then, MC had included garbage collection charges in the property tax bills for the ongoing financial year, citing that not all commercial properties had water connections.
{{/usCountry}}Since then, MC had included garbage collection charges in the property tax bills for the ongoing financial year, citing that not all commercial properties had water connections.
{{/usCountry}}As a result, some property owners received bills as high as ₹70,000 for the complete year, an amount they said was much higher than previous years.
Property owners also complained that MC was charging hefty amounts for garbage collection in advance for the full year even though waste was not collected on many days.
City-based RTI activist RK Garg had also reached out to MC officials, stating that garbage collection charges from water bills (in case of residential areas) and property tax bills (commercial properties) should be delinked as the clubbing of bills contravened the Solid Waste Management Rules, an amendment to which was notified in January 2023.
Mayor Anup Gupta assured the traders/industries associations to delink the garbage charges from the property tax bill and take up this issue for detailed discussion and final decision in the next General House meeting, along with their demand of reducing garbage charges levied on their properties as well.
Integrated waste plant: MC to hold special House meeting on May 13
MC will take up the upcoming integrated solid waste processing plant project in Sector 25 at a special House meeting on May 13.
Aimed at effectively tackling city’s daily waste generation of 550 metric tonnes (MT), the new plant, with a capacity of 600 tonnes per day, is proposed to comprise three facilities – one each for dry, wet and horticulture waste. Spread over 20 acres, it will be set up on a part of the Dadumajra landfill after clearing the area. Of the 550 MT waste generated in the city daily, around 200 MT is dry and 350 MT wet.
In February, MC had accepted the recommendations of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research - National Environment Engineering Research Institution (CSIR-NEERI), Nagpur, to convert wet waste at the plant into biomethane and CNG, while dry waste will be converted into refuse-derived fuel.
For nearly a decade now, most of the city’s solid waste is being dumped unprocessed at the Dadumajra dumping site. MC had taken over of the existing plant from Jaypee Group in June 2020. But even after that the plant has been processing less than 50 MT of the total 550 MT waste generated in the city on a daily basis.
Through a 2020 report, IIT Roorkee had recommended setting up a modern waste processing plant at the existing site in Dadumajra, as even after repairs, the plant can at best run at only 40% of its total capacity, leading to MC’s decision to set up an integrated plant for 100% processing of daily waste.