Cash-strapped MCD to levy garbage user charges on more commercial properties

Cash-strapped unified Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) plans to levy “garbage user charges” on more number of commercial properties so that its present fee collection of 18-19 lakh a month increases to about 10 crore a month, officials in the know of the matter have said.

A senior official from the sanitation department (department of environment management sciences) said the matter was reviewed recently by the commissioner and new targets for levy of user charges have been set. “Currently, the user fee collection from all areas falling under the three erstwhile corporation stands at around 18-19 lakh per month and the department has been provided a target to increase it to 110 crore a year or about 10 crore a month. All commercial property users will have to pay these charges, as mandated by municipal solid waste by-laws, or be ready to pay hefty fines,” the official said,asking not to be named.

While Delhi Solid Waste Management By-laws, 2018, mandate the collection of a user fee from all residential and commercial properties, the civic body has so far been unable to levy these charges on residential properties. “We have decided to continue with the present arrangement of levying charges only on commercial properties — residential properties will not have to pay this fee. Our focus at this stage is to bring all commercial establishments under the user fee ambit,” the official said.

According to the by-laws, the MCD can charge 50-200 a month as garbage user fee from residential properties depending on their area. For commercial properties, the fee varies from 100 a month (for street vendors) to 500 a month (for shops and dhabas) and goes up to 5,000 a month (for marriage halls, exhibitions and fairs).

Private health-care units such as clinics, dispensaries, and laboratories need to pay 2,000 a month (for an establishment with less than 50 beds) and 4,000 a month (for bigger units). The fee for hotels varies from 2,000-5,000, depending on their star rating, while restaurants need to shell out 2,000-3,000 a month depending on their seating capacity. The fines for non-compliance can go up to 1 lakh, the official said.

A second official said there are great variations in user fee collections in the 12 MCD zones of Centre, South, West, Najafgarh, Rohini, Civil Lines, Karol Bagh, SP-City, Keshavpuram, Narela, Shahdara North and Shahdara South. “The user charge collection is low in Shahdara North, West, Karol Bagh and Rohini, while the collection is nil from Narela and Civil Lines. These zones will have to significantly ramp up enrolment of commercial units in their areas,” the official said, asking not to be named.

According to figures available with the MCD, the overall user fee collection in June was 19,24,609 while in July (till date) it was 18,56,902.

The sanitation department will also set up a new escrow account and UPI interface enabled payment module for payment of user charges. “The parking and conversion fee from markets are kept in escrow accounts and the money is used for development of multilevel parking infrastructure. We are also setting up an escrow account so that the garbage user fee can be utilised for sanitation improvement infrastructure. A private collection agency will be hired for this purpose,” the second official said.

Besides being a revenue source, garbage user charges are also expected to help improve waste management practices in the city. Many provisions from the 2018 by-laws such as waste segregation at source, 100% door to door collection of waste, and end user collection mechanism for non-biodegradable packaging material remain only on paper for partially implemented.