The Hindu   28.08.2012

Roundtable on user charges on garbage collection tomorrow

The city unit of Communist Party of India, CPI(M) will organise a roundtable conference on ‘user charges on garbage collection’, here on Wednesday.

The CPI(M) city secretary Ch. Babu Rao said that the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) had prepared the notices to collect user charges from traders and vendors.

The user charges were on a par with the Dangerous and Offensive (D&O) trade license fee collected by the Corporation. The traders vehemently opposed when the VMC attempted to collect the user charges along with the licence fee.

The CPI (M) supported the cause. The Corporation withdrew the proposal then, and was gearing up to levy the user charges again, he said.

‘No provision’

Mr. Babu Rao said that there was no provision for collecting user charges in the Municipal Act.

The sanitation, water, drainage, and lighting tax were components of the property tax collected by the Corporation.

The VMC, however, was hell bent on levying the user charges, which were against the law and a burden on the commoner.

The user charges were likely to touch Rs.46 crore, and the Congress MLAs and Vijayawada MP were behind the scene in collection of the user charges.

To highlight these issues, the roundtable conference was being organised at the Press Club here on Wednesday, he added.