Pay higher cess? What rubbish, BBMP!

As if piles of rotting garbage at every corner and putrid fumes of burning waste aren't enough of an outrage to the taxpayer, the BBMP has now decided to hike the solid waste cess in the name of better management.  Experts have deemed the move ‘irrational’ and believe — not without reason — that the money will only benefit corrupt contractors by funding more trips to landfills. Why should we be forced to shell out even more to the BBMP, which has always failed to deliver?

There is evidence  all around the city that the BBMP has failed miserably in managing its garbage. Piles of uncleared rubbish greet you on the roads, on vacant plots and even under flyovers in what are labelled upmarket localities. And yet the civic agency plans to enhance the cess it collects for Solid Waste Management to 15 per cent of the property tax payable. Its rationale? The cess currently doesn’t meet its expenditure on SWD. But neither urban experts nor ordinary Bengalureans are in a mood to buy its reasoning considering the mess the city is in and  insist it needs to pull up its socks and improve collection , recycling and disposal of garbage before expecting people to pay more for funding the job.

Urban expert R K Mishra believes the hike in cess doesn’t make any sense as it is unlikely to lead to a cleaner Bengaluru. "Does hiking the cess mean  more money will be given to the same corrupt contractors, who mix the segregated waste to increase the number of loads heading to landfills and their pay? Or does the BBMP have any plans to utilise the additional amount collected for better management of garbage with projects like waste-to-energy and so on?” he demands, contending that he is willing to support the hike only  if the BBMP reveals how  the bigger cess will be put to use to create a cleaner Bengaluru.

Read | Guest column: BBMP’s move not rational

Should the agency go ahead anyway with the hike in cess, ignoring the opposition to  it,  the money must go into a separate account and be used only for reducing, reusing and recycling the waste generated in the city and nothing else, he says. "The money should not under at any circumstance be used for any other purpose," the activist underlines.

Echoing his sentiments, secretary of the Indiranagar 1st Stage League, R Hariharan too insists that before the BBMP levies a higher SWM cess,  it must deliver on services  promised. “Going by the High Court order, it should have been collecting only segregated waste from people. But where is the segregation happening? We do not see any big improvement on this front," he points out caustically.

Laying the blame squarely at the civic agency’s door,  he wonders if it even has separate auto tippers to carry the dry and wet waste. Observing that currently the segregated garbage is  dumped in  autos and trucks, where it is mixed up before heading to the landfills, he claims this factor discourages most people from segregating their rubbish.

Suggesting that the BBMP introduce a micro-plan to get the pourakarmikas and auto tippers to work in coordination with Resident Welfare Associations, he says presently, the civic workers and autos, which are supposed to collect garbage door- to -door, are more interested in collecting waste from commercial units for some extra moolah. "The  BBMP must  set right these problems before asking the people to shell out more money for services unrendered," he sums up.

‘Do your job, motivate us to pay our taxes’
Considering the unkempt state of the city , you  don’t need to be an expert in garbage issues to  find the BBMP’s plan of hiking its Solid Waste Management cess unreasonable.

Ordinary people are as vocal in their opposition to the bigger cess, arguing that they cannot be expected to dig deeper into their pockets when the civic agency is not doing the job expected of it even with the cess they are already paying. Protests Mr Venkatesh M of Okalipuram, "What does the BBMP think it is doing? When we are already burdened with a hike in property tax for residential buildings, it wants to collect 15 per cent of this tax paid as SWM cess. What has it done to for the good of the city and its people to motivate us to pay this higher cess ?”

While he believes  that people should not avoid paying  their taxes, he says the government too needs to motivate them to pay up by using their hard earned money for providing efficient civic services. Writer and columnist, Ajith Saldanha too finds the idea of a higher SWM cess  absurd. “People  are being taken for a ride as not everybody is proactive enough to question the BBMP's moves," he says, arguing that  raising cesses will not solve the garbage problems of the city.

"Garbage has to be handled scientifically. Say  if the city is generating about 10,000 tonnes of garbage a day, the  load heading to landfills should be reduced to half through segregation, recycling and composting. Instead of simply creating landfills, what we need is a scientific approach to managing the rubbish,” he stresses.