Agency enlists help to collect trash fees

JAKARTA (JP): The City Sanitation Agency is enlisting the help of various bodies to enforce the collection of sanitation fees to keep the city clean.

M. Subasir, head of the agency, said his office will cooperate with offices of the state-owned electricity company PLN, the city-owned water supply company, and subdistrict offices, to collect the fees.

"The fees are needed to improve the agency's services," Subasir said.

He said the sanitation fees, according to the city regulation no 5/1988, have two grades, one for residential homes and the other for stores.

Residents have to pay sanitation fees between Rp 250 to Rp 10.000 while store owners have to pay between Rp 4,500 to Rp 27,000, he said.

To improve services, he said the agency will deploy 32 new garbage trucks in the five mayoralties. These include six trucks for Central Jakarta, seven for North Jakarta, seven for West Jakarta, six for South Jakarta and six for East Jakarta.

There are currently 900 garbage trucks in the city. Seven hundred and fifteen belong to the agency, while the remaining 185 are rented from private companies.

Subasir said the agency ideally needs 1,607 trucks to load the more than 25,000 cubic meters of garbage accumulated by the city every day.

He said earlier that his agency has suggested the city administration rents more trucks from private companies.

"I hope it will be approved by the administration," he said.

He said renting garbage trucks would be cheaper than buying new trucks since the agency would not be able to pay the maintenance costs.

The municipality has allocated Rp 31.02 billion to the agency in the 1996/1997 fiscal year, an increase from Rp 30.20 billion in this year's budget.

It has also set a target of Rp 12.5 million for the agency's revenue from sanitary fees in the next budget year, an increase from Rp 10.2 billion. (jun)