Maputo, 11 July (AIM) – Maputo Municipal Council says it cannot pay the bills charged by rubbish collection companies in all the urban neighbourhoods, which are now facing heaps of foul-smelling rubbish in the streets.
The deficit is 30 million meticais (about 470,000 US dollars, at the current exchange rate) a month.
According to the municipal councillor for Infrastructure and Health, João Munguambe, speaking to reporters on Wednesday, the Municipality needs 44 million Meticais a month to pay the bills for rubbish collection, but it only has available 14 million meticais, which are collected through the rubbish tax, which is added to the electricity bills paid by residents.
This means that the money paid by residents in the rubbish tax is not enough to cover the costs of waste collection. This is the first time that the municipality has informed Maputo residents that their tax contributions are insufficient.
“At the moment, we have a monthly bill resulting from primary collection of around 10.37 million meticais. And another for secondary collection, which is the main collection, coming to around 33.56 million meticais. The total is about 44 million meticais a month”, Munguambe said.
He explained that due to insufficient funds to cover the costs of rubbish collection with the companies that provide the service, the Municipality has resorted to other sources of income to cover the deficit.
“We are currently working not only with the electricity company (EDM), but also with the service providers to find a way to pay not only the current invoices that result from the monthly service provision, but also the invoices for the debts that have accumulated over the years”, he said.
“We are thinking about how we can mobilize additional resources to cover the debts”, he added.
According to Munguambe, the Municipality has made some payments to reduce the bills, but the debt keeps growing.
“This year we paid around 120 million meticais to Ecolife and Enviroserv, two of the companies responsible for rubbish collection. This means that we are making payments, but they are, of course, insufficient to cover the past debts we have”, he said.
(AIM)
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