Street vendors a distressed lot, to pay Rs 300 monthly for lifting of their garbage Jalandhar, August 21 The Jalandhar Municipal Corporation on Tuesday revised its Solid Waste User Charges policy in which new tariffs were introduced to the garbage sources. On the other hand, the users expressed dissatisfaction over the new charges. The revised tariffs have been fixed from the lowest Rs 30 to Rs 1,00,000 for different sources of waste generation. Among the educational institutes, the distressed lot of users included street vendors, who have to pay Rs 300 monthly for the lifting of their garbage. The amendments have been made by the civic body to ensure that the garbage lifted from the sources could be managed and segregated adequately. For instance, until now, same charges were levied on the residential areas for the door-to-door lifting of garbage. However, in the revised tariff list, the monthly charges would be taken as per the area covered by any house: Rs 30 from slum dwellers, Rs 50 from 10-marla houses, Rs 100 from 11-20-marla houses and Rs 200 from 20-marla-plus houses. Ashika Jain, MC Joint Commissioner, said they were planning to draft the plans through which the tariffs would be collected and the payment made to the rag pickers. The rag-pickers would be provided rehris that would help in the segregation of waste at sources. Besides, fines will also be imposed on the offenders for littering waste, urinating in public places, failure to segregate waste, etc. In addition, the civic body has also fixed the charges for public programmes whether it’s political, religious or any family functions. Though the systematic provisions were not explained on how the charges would be collected, Rs 10000 has been kept for any function having a gathering of 100-1,000 people, Rs 20,000 for a function having 1,001-5,000 people and Rs 50,000 or Rs 1 lakh for a function having over 5,000 people. Till now, no such charges were being recovered. The officials said the residents would be pushed for behavioural changes considering the segregation of waste. Health Officer Sri Krishan said the tariffs had been revised after almost 10 years and the new tariffs would ensure systematic management of waste.

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