MCI plans to charge residents for garbage collection in urban areas
ISLAMABAD: The Metropolitan Corporation Islamabad (MCI) has decided to charge the owners of residential and commercial property in the capital’s urban areas for garbage collection, saying that will be used to improve sewerage and sanitation services.
Today’s (Monday) MCI session will take up the issue and the corporation will impose the charges with the approval of the house.
MCI Director Sanitation Sardar Khan Zimri said the MCI does not charge for garbage collection or street cleaning services.
If approved at MCI session today, the corporation will call tender to outsource garbage collection in city
“We only collect around Rs100 per house as a conservancy charge, which includes road maintenance, parks maintenance, streetlights etc, so we have no funds to improve our sanitation services,” he said.
If approved by the house, he said, the MCI will outsource garbage collection in the capital. Mr Zimri said the proposed rates for garbage collection will vary be sector, houses in E sectors would be charged Rs4 per square feet of covered area per year, houses in the F sectors would be charged Rs3 per sq ft and houses in G and I sectors would be charged Rs2 per sq ft. Residents of I-8, however, would have to pay Rs3 per sq ft.
Mr Zimri said that the new charges are expected to bring in more than Rs1 billion per year to be spent on garbage collection and disposal.
Asked about the rural areas, he said that the MCI will work out a system to collect and dispose of garbage through union council chairmen. He claimed that the MCI has placed bins in some union councils where residents can dispose of waste for the MCI to collect.
The MCI only collects garbage in urban areas, with few arrangements for the capital’s rural outskirts.
MCI staff has been collecting garbage from the F sectors while garbage collection in the G sectors has been outsourced. A contract to collect garbage in I-8 and I-10 was discontinued by the MCI last month because of a lack of funding.