BMC to impose garbage tax soon

MUMBAI: Mumbai’s residents may have to pay a ‘user fee’ on solid waste management – a garbage tax – to fund the massive process of collecting, transporting and processing the city’s trash. The fee proposed to be collected – ₹687 crore a year from residential properties alone – would help the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) enhance its waste-management systems, invest in modern technology and improve overall service delivery.

“The BMC had sought legal opinion on introducing the user fee. Having received the go-ahead for this, we will begin stakeholder consultations – calling for suggestions and objections – in a few days,” said a senior official with the BMC’s solid waste management department.

Introducing the user fee would mean revising Mumbai’s solid waste management bye-laws, which haven’t been amended in almost 20 years. After 2006, when the BMC rolled out its Greater Mumbai Cleanliness and Sanitation Bye-laws, there has been an evolution in the solid waste management laws governing the country.

The Centre had issued the overarching Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016, followed by the Maharashtra government’s Solid Waste Management Bye-laws, 2019, under the Maharashtra Municipal Corporation Act, 1949, for urban areas of the state. The 1949 Act applies to all municipal corporations for all larger urban areas – except the BMC, which is governed by the Greater Mumbai Cleanliness and Sanitation Bye-laws, 2006, under the Mumbai Municipal Corporation Act, 1888.

In addition, there have been a host of laws dealing with specific kinds of waste – plastic, biomedical, construction and demolition waste, and e-waste. The upcoming draft bye-laws will incorporate all the above into a comprehensive set of rules for Mumbai, said the senior civic official.

The user fee: How much

According to the new draft rules, the BMC proposes to charge the following monthly fees for residential units: ₹100 for a unit up to 50 sq m; ₹500 for areas up to 300 sq m; and ₹1,000 for those over 300 sq m.

Commercial establishments, clinics, cottage industries and event halls, will be charged at different rates, starting with a minimum ₹500.

The senior civic official said the new user fee is being imposed due to the city’s increasing population and the growing volume of solid waste Mumbai produces – 7,500 tonnes a day, at present. The city’s per capita expenditure for SWM is ₹3,141, far higher than other cities – Pune ₹1,724, Kolkata ₹1,584 and Bengaluru ₹1,335. “These other cities already charge a fee for SWM, in line with the central act,” the official said.

The new draft bye-laws will also raise the penalties for offences such as littering, spitting, urinating, defecating and bathing in public, delivering unsegregated waste, delivering segregated waste not as per specifications, unauthorised dumping of construction and demolition waste, hawking without a waste bin, not keeping a house gully clean, etc.

With the more stringent rules focusing on individual responsibility, complaint redressal mechanisms are also being introduced; any aggrieved person will have the right to complain before the ward’s assistant commissioner within 30 days.

After the stakeholder hearings and the incorporation of objections and suggestions, if needed, the new draft bye-laws will be tabled in the state legislative assembly for an amendment to the Mumbai Municipal Corporation Act, 1888.

“It is surprising that Mumbai does not have a SWM user fee yet,” remarked Atin Biswas, programme director, Solid Waste Management and Circular Economy, at the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE). “Collecting waste from households’ doorstep is a service offered by the municipality, which then goes on to process it at no cheap cost. There is no reason for this to be free and the civic body is completely within their legal rights to impose a fee, although the rates can be questioned. In fact, Mumbai is lagging as the SWM Rules, 2016, mandated urban bodies to incorporate the Act within a year.”