THE Suva City Council's Green Waste policy is a decision made subjectively and is prone to corruption and personal favours, says the Consumer Council of Fiji.
Council chief executive Premila Kumar said while the efforts of the SCC to achieve a clean, litter-free city by 2010 was laudable, the council disagreed with the heavy-handed manner in which the SCC imposed the new policy on ratepayers.
"A group of 20 councillors has made a subjective decision for about 10,000 ratepayers without considering their views," Ms Kumar said.
"Now we have a thoughtless and an unsound policy on our hands that is going to put added financial costs on the ratepayers of Suva who do not approve of the policy."
Ms Kumar said such policies should be made in an objective manner and inclusive of the group of people it concerns.
She said the SCC had overlooked numerous issues when imposing this policy.
These include:
Making private properties accessible to contractors;
Making it difficult for residents living in areas that are hard to access because they will incur additional costs as they have to make special arrangements with the SCC;
It inconveniences working ratepayers as most of them will be at work at the time of collection; and
The SCC has not communicated to ratepayers the extra charges for special collection and other additional services rendered regarding green waste collection.
Ms Kumar said they were interested to know if the SCC had explored other options for green waste collection. "Instead of having residents fill their sacks and have these collected from within their private properties, why can't they do the same but leave the sacks outside their properties on the scheduled dates as is done for normal kitchen garbage collection," she said.
The Council Council is urging the Local Government Ministry to intervene to ensure the ratepayers' views are sought and a satisfactory decision reached.
