Buildings composting green waste in Nashik to get 5% concession in property tax

Nashik: The Nashik Municipal Corporation (NMC), in a bid to promote composting of wet waste, is planning to introduce 5% concession in property tax for all buildings that carry out this process on their premises.

Concession in property tax will be implemented after an approval from the civic body’s general body meeting. Municipal commissioner Radhakrishna Game said such tax concession would be introduced shortly to encourage citizens for composting wet waste.

“The NMC collects 550 tonne of wast from across the city through 225 garbage vans. This include both dry and wet waste. It costs around Rs 2,000 per tonne to collect the filth from the city. Hence, we are planning to introduce concession in property tax for those buildings that resort to composting wet or green waste,” he said.

According to Game, the objective is to encourage people to start composting wet waste on their premises of their buildings, apartments or societies.

The move is aimed at reducing the waste that the civic body collects from households on a daily basis and that will in turn save money spent on the collection of waste.

The NMC is already giving 5% concession in property tax to citizens who are using solar power. Another NMC official said they are also creating awareness among people about composting of green waste in view of the Swachh Survekshan programme 2020 — launched by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA).

“We are organising clean establishment competitions for buildings, school, colleges and government offices. Those resorting to composting of wet waste will definitely get more marks,” the official said.

This is the fifth edition of the annual cleanliness survey that is to be held in January 2020 and the NMC has already started preparations in this connection.

Nashik did not fare well in the last survey (2019) as its ranking dropped from 63 in 2018 to 67 among 425 cities. “We have identified the areas where we did not perform well during the last survey and that led to drop in ranking of cleaning cities. Citizens feedback and documentation of activities were the major areas where we did not do well last year,” the NMC official said.

“Hence, we want to increase participation of citizens in view of the Swachh Survekshan so that the ranking of the city improves this time,” he added.