Govt should have gone to court on plastic bag tax dispute: Nasheed

Parliament speaker Mohamed Nasheed said on Monday that it would have been easier to resolve the issue of increase in plastic bags charges under the new Waste Management Act if the matter had been brought to the court instead of approaching the parliament to amend the law.

Nasheed made the remarks while speaking on the government's amendment bill to the Waste Management Act in parliament on Monday.

The Waste Management Bill, which was passed by parliament in November, became law and plastic bags were taxed from Tuesday.

With this change, there is now an MVR 2 tax on polythene bags, both while buying the bag itself and after basic shopping. With this, the price of bags sold by wholesale shops has gone up manifold and people are worried about the increase in the cost of waste disposal.

As a solution, the government has proposed an amendment to the law to exempt the levy of tax on bag bundles containing 50 or more plastic bags.

Before opening the debate on the bill, Nasheed said that when the waste management bill was first examined, the decision not to levy tax on bundles containing 50 or more plastic bags was not omitted by mistake. Without adding the tax exception, Nasheed said that they had sent the bill to the Environment Ministry and the Attorney General's Office for comments on the proposed amendments, but none of them had mentioned the exception.

"However, none of these agencies have mentioned in their comments, when they have seen and reviewed the bill beforehand, that article 32 does not contain an exception to bang bundles containing more than 50 bags," he said.

Nasheed had said that the decision not to waive taxes on bag bundles was taken with the knowledge of the ministry, while the ministry issued a statement on Wednesday indicating that the decision for no exceptions was taken by parliament alone. 

"However, this clause was omitted when the Waste Management Bill was passed by parliament," the ministry said in a statement.

According to the government, though the change was made by parliament, it decided to ratify the bill as it was important for providing basic waste management services.

Stating that double taxes cannot be levied, Nasheed said it would have been easier if the amendment had been brought to the court instead of being tabled in parliament.

"It would have been easier to go to court for the issue rather than for the government to come to the parliament concerned about it," he said.

Nasheed said the government proposed to amend the clause after people expressed their concern in two to three social media posts. He said that though some people had expressed their displeasure over it, he did not believe that carrying a bag from home to the market would be an inconvenience to Maldivians.