VIJAYAWADA: Apartments owners in the city are pleading with the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) not to categorise them as bulk waste generators (BWGs) as they, too, pay taxes to the civic body on par with the owners of individual houses.
In a meeting organised by Taxpayers Association here on Sunday, they maintained that the civic body should consider each flat in the apartment building as an individual unit on the lines of individual houses, as every flat has an assessment number. They also questioned the VMC for the 'discrimination' against the apartment owners when it comes to garbage disposal.
"How can the VMC categorise the entire apartment building as a BWG when it did not distinguish between flats and houses in property tax?" asked P Krishna Prasad, who owns a flat in Satyanarayanapuram.
He further said it would confuse the apartment dwellers whether to hand over the waste to the empanelled agency or set up composting units within the complexes, as directed by the VMC.
T Yagna Sree, a representative of an apartment in Maruti Nagar, said, "It’s the duty of the VMC to collect waste from households and other establishments. At present, the civic body is charging the residents for sanitation maintenance under conservancy tax. Instead of treating apartments as BWGs, it should give incentives as the civic body collects waste from all flats in an apartment at one place."
Opposing the civic body’s decision for setting up an on-site composting unit in the apartment complexes, MV Anjaneyulu, representative of the Bodapati Apartments, found fault with the civic body for categorising apartment buildings as BWGs and pointed out that space was a big issue in such complexes and setting up large composting units there could be a major problem. Responding to the demands, VMC chief medical officer for health K Arjuna Rao told TNIE that serving notices on the apartments was not an overnight decision.
For almost three years, the civic body has been holding talks with hoteliers and other bulk waste generators in the city to establish on-site composting units on their premises, he said. "In all, 400 BWGs are identified and a meeting with them will be conducted shortly to elicit them about the guidelines in the Municipal Solid Waste Management Rules."
Bulk waste generators (units which produce 50-100 kg waste/day) 400 Number of divisions: 59 Population as in 2020: 13.50 lakh (app) Daily waste generated by the city: 550 metric tonnes |