Electricity, waste collection to have same bill

State-owned Waste Management Company WAMCO said Thursday it is making preparations to include the fee charged for garbage collection services in the electricity bill and is in talks with the authorities concerned.

WAMCO is providing waste collection services in the Male area and the issue of some customers availing the service not paying their bills is a major issue for the company. There has been talk of including waste collection charges in water or electricity bills to solve the problem for some time now.

WAMCO Managing Director Yusuf Siraj told Atoll Times on Thursday:

"It involves a lot of technical aspects and it's difficult to say when it will start directly. However, integration, data sharing activities are underway between WAMCO and STELCO. We are targeting to start billing through STELCO in the first half of the current financial year," Siraj said.

Siraj said there are 24,000 customers in the Male area who are registered with WAMCO and avail services. Earlier, it was difficult to collect fees from customers, but now 85% of the customers who get the service by registering themselves pay for the service, he said.