The Federation of Noida RWAs (FONRWA), the umbrella body of city RWAs, is opposing Noida Authority’s recent decision to charge residents for door-to-door garbage collection. They also held a press conference at their Sector 52 office today to reiterate the same.
FONRWA appealed to Noida Authority to not levy the cost on residents, who are already paying for the provision of municipal services. According to FONRWA members, the authority has instructed that they will not pick up unsegregated waste from residential sectors after June 30. But, members added, the authority is yet to finalise deployment of the agency that will hire authorised pickers, so what are the residents to do from July 1? Whom should they handover the waste to?
NP Singh, president of FONRWA, further said, "The residents and RWAs have approached FONRWA for a resolution. Noida Authority should initially provide this service for free, and if residents find the service acceptable and up to the mark, then levy costs. Second, we think that a huge amount of income is expected through this operation for the waste collector, they why recover the costs from poor residents?”
Elaborating further, Singh said, “The authorised picker will earn huge amounts through the sale of waste materials such as water bottles, aluminum items and other things of value. The picker can also sell the compost made of wet waste.”
He continued, “The city’s population is more than 10 lakh and the number of families is estimated around 2.5 lakh. Even if the lowest slab of Rs 25 per month is charged per family, the aggregated collection of user charges shall come to Rs 62.5 lakh per month. Then you have restaurants, guest houses, malls, hotels, institutions, hospital, etc. — it can yield an income to the tune of several crores for the designated agency — why are we paying for this!”
“According to Clause 3(54) of solid waste management rules, it has up to the local body to recover either full or partial cost of providing solid waste collection. Hence, in public interest, it is not desirable to recover this cost from residential families. They are already paying for the provision of municipal services in the leasehold cost and other charges of the properties,” another FONRWA member said.
On June 13, Noida Authority fixed the rate of door-to-door garbage collection — between Rs 25 to Rs 10,000 for residential, institutional and industrial premises. The rates have been defined in accordance with the solid waste management rule of 2016.
All the gated colonies and RWA's will have to pay Rs 30 irrespective of their size. Restaurant and hotels will have to pay Rs 500 Rs 3,000, while the educational and healthcare institutions will have to pay between Rs 250 to Rs 5,000.
Industrial units which include MSME/workshops/service centers/factories etc will have to pay between Rs 500 to Rs 10,000 depending on their size. Metro stations and bus stands will have to pay between Rs 2,500 to Rs 5,000.
