By Evie Andreou
Nicosia district residents will see increases to their refuse bills by up to 14 per cent for this year and each of the next two years so that local authorities can cover losses for a nine-fold increase in rubbish management costs since the Kotsiatis landfill closed at the end of February.
The decision comes after local authorities realised they could not cope with the additional costs that soared from €8 per tonne to the €43 per tonne charged by the Koshi waste treatment plant in Larnaca that now takes in Nicosia’s rubbish.
Nicosia district mayors and community leaders called on the government last month for monetary assistance to help cover the loss after the annual cost of rubbish management this year shoots up from €759,000 to €6.7m.
Strovolos mayor, Andreas Papacharalambous, who is also the head of the Nicosia district’s municipal council for waste management spaces, said that one way or another the taxpayer would foot the bill.
“What did we do at Kotsiatis? We used to take there all our rubbish – domestic, bulky items such as old furniture and mattresses, trimmings – and bury them, at €8 per tonne,” he told the Sunday Mail. “It was economic but catastrophic for the environment.”
Now, local authorities have to pay more than five times that amount to the Koshi waste treatment plant, but costs don’t just stop there.
“Koshi only takes domestic waste. Trimmings go to another management facility and bulky items to another,” Papacharalambous said, adding that local authorities pay these facilities to take in these items.
Plus, he said, Koshi is located further away from Nicosia than Kotsiatis, meaning more fuel and more maintenance costs for the local authorities’ trucks and more man hours. All this, he said, puts the total costs at more than €6m.
Less than half of this has already been added this year on residents’ refuse tax.
“The rest we are asking from the government since it is them that reached the agreement with the Koshi plant,” he said.
Local authorities want the government to cover the rest of the costs for this year, while Nicosia district residents will pay even higher refuse tax in 2020 and again in 2021 until that loss is gradually covered.
The mayor said the government will have to make up the rest for 2020, and costs should be covered by 2021 with the raised annual tax on residents for the third year in the row.
Since parliament put a 14 per cent annual increase cap, he said, local authorities will increase up to that percentage next year and the same in 2021.
That way, he said, local authorities will gradually cover that loss so that they won’t need aid from the government.
“Polluters pay, there is no other way,” he said.
Whatever the solution, taxpayers bear the burden, he said.
Either the government subsidises local authorities with taxpayer money, he said, or local authorities raise refuse taxes. “One way or the other, taxpayers will foot the bill.”
The Strovolos mayor said the new system is good but costly.
“We ought to pollute less to pay less.”
He said the state and local authorities ought to provide recycling solutions such as the ‘pay as you throw’ scheme.
But even if everyone started recycling from next year the cost would only drop marginally.
Papacharalambous said local authorities are waiting for the government to brief them on the pay as you throw scheme, recently announced by Agriculture Minister Costas Kadis, that concerns a new law on garbage collection fees based on the usage-pricing model. The minister would like the bill passed by parliament by the end of the year.
Under this regime, users will pay in advance for all the garbage they wish to be collected by purchasing a custom bag at a relatively high cost.
“We are waiting to be presented with the scheme. I know that serious work is being done,” he said.
But although such a scheme would improve the situation, the risk of fly-tipping remains high.
“Things will not change from one moment to the next, mentality will gradually change,” he said, adding that further recycling campaigns are needed
Residents already dump items they don’t know what to do with in empty plots, on main roads or in the common areas of apartment buildings.
Papacharalambous said it was very difficult to enforce the law because only offenders seen by municipal employees can be taken to court.
“If someone else reports fly-tipping, they have to testify in court and they don’t want to, they say they are afraid of retaliation,” he said.
Papacharalambous said only the establishment of a municipal police force would give local authorities the power to tackle fly-tipping.
“Take dog faeces – so many dogs are being walked every morning, how are municipal employees going to monitor and catch each offender?”
Eight green spots where residents can take any items they want to dispose were supposed to be up and running in time for the closure of Kotsiatis, but lack of proper planning and stalling by “everyone involved”, he said, delayed their opening until last Tuesday.
The green spots are located in Ergates, Kokkinotrimithia, Peristerona, Astromeritis, Linou, Alambra, Strovolos and Malounda. The Strovolos green spot is near the Nicosia general hospital.
Nicosia district residents will be able to take bulky items like old furniture, electric and electronic appliances, trimmings, plastic containers, carton and paper, glass, aluminium, wood, fabrics, scrap metal, x-rays, old toys, car batteries, paint, cooking oil, thermometers and medicine.
The green spots will accept these items free of charge – though residents will have to get the items there – as long as they are sorted separately and were intended for domestic use and not for business or agricultural use.
A large information campaign will be launched within the coming days with everything residents need to know about their operation, Papacharalambous said.
He added that the temporary green spots that have been operated by each municipality are not related with the new ones.
“The actual green spots are large infrastructures that cost millions,” he said.
The illegal landfills at Kotsiatis in Nicosia and Vati in Limassol closed down at the end of February as part of Cyprus’ obligation to implement the European directives on waste management which were supposed to have been enforced by 2013 at the latest.
The Kotsiatis rubbish dump was originally supposed to close in 2009 but after a plan to build a separate waste-management plant in Nicosia was scrapped, it was decided to transfer rubbish from Kotsiatis to the Koshi plant in Larnaca. Procedures for this were delayed following the bribery scandals and ensuing trials concerning Helector, which runs Koshi and Paphos sanitary landfills.
The issue was even further delayed following constant rejections by the Central Committee on Changes and Claims (KEAA) of deals agreed between the government and Helector on the management of the Nicosia district’s rubbish. The government reached an agreement with Helector last year.
