A final court ruling confirming the illegality of linking garbage collection fees to electricity bills has placed the government in a major muddle. Dena Rashed reports After years of complaints and lawsuits, the Supreme Administrative Court has finally ruled against the linking of garbage collection fees to electricity bills in both the Alexandria and Giza governorates. The court cancelled the government's decision to impose these fees on the public, dubbing them as unconstitutional and illegal. The court's decision confirms an administrative court ruling that was contested by the government last January. The fees system was devised as a way to pay for the government's subcontracting of garbage collection to private multinational solid waste management companies, a process that began in Alexandria in 2001 and was later adopted in both the Cairo and Giza governorates. As a way of ensuring that garbage collection fees would be paid regularly, the governorates adopted a system that calculated the fees by basing them on electricity consumption. The more people consumed electricity, the more they paid for their garbage to be removed. Businesses were charged based on both the nature of their business, as well as their consumption of electricity. The court's ruling, however, made it painfully clear that the solid waste management project's basic pillar -- i.e. the manner by which the fees for the service were being collected -- had completely broken down. The system, the court said, was not based on a law like 1967's Law 38 regulating local councils' right to impose cleanliness fees on tenants. This law allows local councils the right to collect fees to cover public cleanliness, as long as those fees do not exceed two per cent of a dwelling's rental rate. It was thus illegal, the court said, to impose new garbage collection fees that also exceeded the two per cent limit. The system, the verdict said, encroached on citizens' rights. The court ruling generated varied responses, ranging from relief on the part of many ordinary people, to somewhat neutral reactions from the garbage companies, to the government's utter confusion and shock. Many people were especially excited by the fact that Electricity Minister Hassan Younis decided to immediately implement the court's verdict. "It was about time they cancel this system," said Hussein Othman, the owner of a restaurant in the Giza district of Doqqi, "because it was unfair for us". Othman said that because he paid LE100 in electricity fees every month, he had to pay almost LE40 for garbage collection fees. "We did not feel like we were paying an appropriate amount for the service, but we had no choice but to pay," he said. For coffee shop owner Badr Mohamed, the court ruling also came as a relief. "I had to pay about LE80 per month for the garbage collection fees," he said. Mohamed said that while some people he knew had been refusing to pay, he was worried that his electricity would be cut off. The ministry is expecting that those who had been refusing to pay their electricity bills will now begin to do so again. The government, meanwhile, now has to deal with a vital question: how to finance the solid waste management project. It appears that no alternate plans were being made, even though it was clear that there was a chance the courts would rule against it. "We are in a fix," said Cairo Cleanliness and Beautification Authority Director Mohamed Laban. "We did not expect the court's ruling." Laban said he did not know how the project would be financed, or who would be responsible for it. In any case, it is the government that will have to find another way to pay the multinational firms their LE257 million in fees per year. The governorates and the companies have signed 15-year contracts. While Spanish company Enser declined to comment on the ruling, Italian Ama Arab's Chairman Massimo Tabacchiera said it would not affect the work, since it was solely up to the government to collect the fees any way they can. In Alexandria, Deputy Governor Saffaeddin Kamel said, "we don't know exactly what is going to happen; we are studying the possibility of finding other ways to finance the project, but nothing is clear yet." By using the term "services provided" instead of "garbage collection fees" on electricity bills, Cairo Governorate has thus far managed to avoid the legal conundrums suffered by Giza and Alexandria, said Cairo Deputy Governor Abdel-Hadi Gadel-Mawla. That respite, however, would probably not last forever, Gadel-Mawla told Al-Ahram Weekly, because "even though the court order addressed Alexandria and Giza, we will [eventually] find ourselves facing the same situation." Gadel-Mawla said the companies would continue to collect the garbage, "but the government would have to find a way out soon."
