Members of civil society and representatives of various residential colony associations have unanimously opposed the user charge on garbage collection being imposed on the public by the municipal corporation.
Speaking at a roundtable meet organised by the Taxpayers’ Association, its secretary M.V. Anjaneyulu alleged that the civic body had warned that garbage would not be collected if user charges were not paid. The civic body was desperate to collect the user charges and even warned that the salaries of the sanitation staff would not be paid if they failed to collect the charges. The order was later withdrawn following protests by the workers, he said.
Other speakers said that garbage removal was a public health issue that needed to be taken care of by civic bodies for free. Property owners were already paying taxes in various forms and the user charge in the name of garbage collection was an additional burden, they said.
The meet asked the government to immediately scrap the user charges being collected from the households and property owners for more than a year.
