Rs 600-cr garbage-collection burden on Bengaluru residents opposed: Report
Civic leaders have said it would be an additional burden on the household budget, and asked for a white paper on the accounts of BSWML and BBMP
The residents of Bengaluru will reportedly have to cough up an additional Rs 600 crore annually as user fees to the Bengaluru Solid Waste Management Ltd (BSWML) to pay for door-to-door garbage collection.
The Bengaluru civic body had proposed the collection of user fees from the city’s 46 lakh households and commercial establishments last November. The BSWML, an arm of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), is likely to introduce the user fee from the 2025-26 financial year.
Reacting to the news, some civic leaders in the city have asked for a white paper to be prepared to throw light on the accounts of BSWML and BBMP, according to a report by Deccan Herald.
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BSWML, set up in 2022, is mandated with the collection, transportation, and disposal of the 6,000 tonnes of garbage the city of Bengaluru generates on a daily basis. Its annual expenditure has seen a steady increase, and now amounts to Rs 550 crore.
Impact on common citizens
Leaders of various parties have pointed out that the user fee to be paid by every resident would be an additional burden on the household budget, which is already under pressure due to inflation, multiple EMIs, stagnant wages, high fuel costs, and increasing rentals.
A spokesperson for the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Bengaluru, Anil Nachappa, said, “The deputy chief minister may think that he can create facilities similar to those in London or Paris by charging the user fee. But, in reality, can the people of Bengaluru afford to pay it?”
Nachappa said the middle class would be further burdened by this additional annual expense.
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Another political leader, Srikanth Narasimhan, the founder of the Bengaluru NavaNirmana Party (BNP) said his party was completely opposed to the user fee.
Narasimhan said that citizens are already paying multiple taxes, but there’s no information about how this money is spent. He said his party would not support additional taxes unless the authorities provided proper accounts.
It is not clear how much the annual user fee would be per household.
Expert’s suggestions
A solid waste management expert was of the opinion that neither the BBMP nor the BSWML had spent the money at their disposal sensibly till now.
He bemoaned the fact that these organisations were spending money on dumping waste in landfills, administrative costs, and village development projects.
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Instead, he said the government should build biogas plants, open dry waste collection centres, set up composting units at the ward level, and improve the working conditions for pourakarmikas.