The charges will continue to be attached to the monthly electricity bill, so that there is no way for anyone to avoid paying them without having his electricity disconnected.
But the existing system, which took effect in 2003, is a flat rate system, whereas the new system coming into effect in January, is indexed to the amount of electricity used.
Currently, whether a household uses 10 kilowatt hours or 10,000 kilowatt hours, the garbage fee is the same - 20 meticais (about 80 US cents) a month.
But the new system is that household consumers will be charged 15 centavos (0.15 meticais) per kilowatt hour, while companies will pay a fixed rate of 150 meticais a month.
Households can expect a sharp increase in the garbage collection fee. A household that uses 300 kilowatt hours a month will pay 45 meticais, more than double the current figure of 20 meticais. According to a report in Monday's issue of the Maputo daily "Noticias", the new fee is fixed for the next two years, which is the first stage in a new waste management system in the city.
But as from 2009, the fee will increase again, to 20 centavos per kilowatt hour for household consumers, and 200 meticais a month for companies.
The Maputo municipal councillor for the area of health and sanitation, Joao Schwalbach, explained that these new fees are to help improve the quality of services rendered to the public. The city produces about 1,140 tonnes of rubbish every day, and calculations made by the municipality show that the existing rubbish fee comes nowhere near covering the costs of removing this mountain of garbage.
The "Noticias" story claims that the new system is based on a "polluter pays" principle. But in reality households using electricity are likely to cause less pollution than households in the poorer suburbs who rely on wood fuel. But the city council has yet to find a way of collecting the rubbish fee from those households not connected to the electricity grid.
SOURCE: AIM
