Some Zambians in Kitwe and Lusaka are opposed to plans by the two local authorities introduce a new levy that will be slapped on phone Airtime to go towards garbage collection.
In interviews in Lusaka and Kitwe, the residents say the levy is unnecessary because they are still paying a lot of water for refuse collection to agents of the local authorities.
Others wondered how such a levy will be computed in households with people with more than one mobile phone.
Chibale Bwalya, a resident of Kitwe wondered how the Council will collect such amounts in houses where more people use mobile phones more often than others.
Mwansa Kombe feared that some households who buy a lot of talk time will be subsidising garbage collection of other users.
This follows the announcement by Kitwe Mayor Christopher Kang’ombe and his Lusaka counterpart that Lusaka and Kitwe will take the lead in obtaining the modalities with ZICTA on the proposal to collect Waste Management Levy through the network providers as first option.
The two Mayors said the Town Clerk and Finance officials from both Councils will continue with the exchange programs to further discuss the implementation of the Solid Waste Management Levy.
The two officials who held a consultative meeting in Lusaka last week said there is overwhelming support from the people and government towards a much cheaper and efficient management of solid waste.
“Collection and management of solid water by the Council in Lusaka District would need at least 7 Tipper Trucks per Constituency. While Lusaka has over 350,000 Houses, less than 60% are captured while Kitwe has captured and collect rates from less than 50% of the total number of Houses,” a brief statement released after the meeting said.
The two Mayors said the collection of Solid Waste Management Levy would be more effective and efficient through the Mobile Phones using the network providers.
Nonsense,how do we payou for service we won’t receive. Do you think we got money that comes easily and if we won’t be protected by the government,then we must protect ourselves by all means.
But these thugs really want to milk Zambians of their hardly earned income zoooona, where do they take the council money ?? Kang’ombe will slowly start becoming unpopular among us his fellow intellectuals and youths if he starts to follow the foot steps of his chief thug Lungu
Kwasala tax for making love to our wives, wait.
Another scam like e-voucher.
Look at those sofas in a PF majors office. Why do Zambian obsessed to heavy useless extravaganza? That’s garbage in itself.
@1.2 also tax for making love to ma wholays
Another of these top-down decisions that just benefit the thieves. I expect young people like Kang’ombe to bring a new way of thinking into these institutions.
Its not just the collection they should be talking about but the whole chain of garbage generation, storage, collection & disposal.
We should not just be rushing to money as the panacea to our problems when we don’t have any ideas.
Chris, I suggest you try a “chalo bantu” approach in dealing with issues. You will see how many brilliant ideas you will get from areas like Chisokone market, Kawama, kwa Mulenga etc. Borrow the idea of LEKOTLA from some municipalities in SA.
Because they are animals! They would rather live with filth!
What is the relationship between talk time and garbage? Can any pf kadalishilu explain?
There is always a difference between: Efficient collection of levies and efficient utilization of the collected levy. The later being the most important of the two. By the way K2 per day per person is equivalent to R60 per 30 days. With these statistics, that is approximately K420 000 per month if each household has only one cell phone. With that kind of money, Lusaka should never have visible garbage lying anywhere. The question is: Is it possible? Look, the current crop of staff at LCC leaves much to be desired. Eh where is the Constituency Development Fund? I am very angry with LCC. Honestly Cairo road without road markings! This so called parkrite guys have used poor quality road marking paint with skewed markings. I do not understand all this nonsense. What is simply wrong with us…
Nostradamus: Agreed. Some sofas are like you manufactured them yourself for a specific assignment. How do you have such kind of sofa in your office. How many times does this guy seat on that Sofa. In any case the Lusaka Mayor looks extremely lost with his posture on the Sofa. Does this guys understand the work of a Mayor. Kangombe seems to be the only Mayor in this country who understands his role. The rest are just political stooges. It seems no body has a solution for the floods in Lusaka. Lusaka is flat: My foot, so what. People drain water in plains. I am telling you despite us experience these floods this rain season, these floods nonsense will continue even next year in the same areas that are flooding this year. We simply do not learn anything.
Just take street vendors to markets & collect levy from there to clean up towns and cities. People pay rental fees for houses and businesses, that’s where you get the money for garbage collection
What another daft idea from PF! The levy should indeed be collected from street vendors who work and litter all day on the same streets that need cleaning. Also how do these PF dimwits tell who still resides in their towns? There’s a lot of movement of people between towns and people do not necessarily update their residential details since you do not get paid for doing so. And in Lusaka some places with Lusaka addresses are actually in Chilanga, Kafue or Chibombo districts.
That will be too hard to control and account for. Let the council explain how they will collect that fairly.
Some proposals! Do these people do research and survey before they come up with a proposal?? This proposal has a lot of related relevant questions which seem not to have been asked nor addressed! It’s like a proposal made during a drinking spree: “boi, you know we can collect a lot of money if we use mobile phone service?” The other responds, “you are very right, let’s involve ZICTA”.
hope that useless kalumba learnt something from kangombe about how to remove street vendors…USELESS
VERY HOPELESS INDEED!! I wonder where we are going, EDUCATED AND YOUNG LEADERS COMING UP WITH SUCH A SHALLOW PROPOSAL- just REFUSING TO THINK AND ENGAGE WITH REAL EXPERTS TO FIND A SOLUTION! Is airtime the source of the dirtiness we see in cities or it is a result of other causes like: bad culture of littering, poor service delivery by city authorities etc!! HOW DO THEY WISH TO LINK PHONE USAGE TO DIRTINESS AS IF ALL DIRTINESS COMES FROM SCRATCH CARDS?? A VILLAGER TO PAY MORE FOR COMMUNICATING ON PHONE TO SUBSIDIZE DIRT ACTS OF AN ILL CULTURED TOWN DWELLER?? What a bunch of LEFT OVERS OF LEADERSHIP they are??
Just a way of PF to rip off zambians.
That is why you need to know how many houses are in each city and who owns each house. You already collect land rates, why not link that to garbage collection or are people already paying for garbage collection else where and you just want to steal…..?
This is the continuing vengeance of PF against ordinary Zambians. PF govt is so broke it will choke Zambians until we are all law breakers like Mmembe.
chimbi no plan
Good idea, almost everyone with a cellphone throws litter on the street. Let the council implement this idea
Ati everyone with a phone throws litter on the street ? You know being a Fontinee is embarrassing.
@9 …thinking using your a.s.s is bad culture
Utter stupidity…is this the final product of a brain storming session in the bar after clearing all the alcohol behind the counter.
This is why i was against this registration excercise!!
Really dogs proposal, so if you have four lines, they collect matufi levy 4 times from one person, ubu bwena bukopo no bupuba, do not even try bakapoli imwe. Already you make us buy airtime which is heavily taxed and you want to impose another stupid levy like you force us to pay for your *****ic ZNBC rubbish?
rubbish You fail to collect money from markets and bus station now you want to start collecting from airtime purchase.
1.How will they force compliance?
2.In makeni, we have a rubbish pit (muganda) why should we pay?
3.If somebody is passing through from another town, buys talk time and proceed to their destination outside Lusaka, why should they pay for garbage which they have not generated?
4.Why should we pay for garbage that is generated by street venders whom you have allowed?
5. Will I be getting a receipt so that we hold somebody accountable?
6. If I Choose not to top up, will i be committing an offence for not paying for garbage collection?
7. What about personal levy for those who are in active employment- it means we shall be paying twice to the council.
Remove street…
contin…
7. What about personal levy for those who are in active employment- it means we shall be paying twice to the council.
Remove street venders or let them pay for the dirt they generate secondly remove carders from markets and stations and see how much you will be able to collect.
Zambians accept alot of nonsense this just not on never.
I think nabamba ukupena: At my house I have umukanda and I have never ever seen even a councilor wa ku kwacha East or East of kwacha bothering of Roads (See at UCZ, Changa namai – how the road is nomba ati tulefwaya Levy ya Gabbage: ZRA nayo at each person with a bank account should register for a TPIN and give it to his/her Bank yakwe. They want to start taxing our hard earned money (ZRA dont reap where they have not sown): Where do you take money from Copper Sales , Emeralds, Uranium, Gold, Diamonds at Kansanshi Mine.
“…Where do you take money from Copper Sales , Emeralds, Uranium, Gold, Diamonds at Kansanshi Mine…”
They buy SUVS, free talk time,free loans for furnitures for ministers.
I don’t know how many times Kang’ombe & Kalumba think per day, if not less than half? Most cellphone subscribers have at least 3 Sim Cards, one for each network. Some parents even acquire 3 sim cards for each of their children for communication purposes including 3 year old kids when they knock off from school, church, etc. So for a household of 10 people that is 30 sim cards. Some ladies even buy10 for use by each customer. Should children be paying taxes to govt before they attain majority age? These two are failing to think to make garbage collection popular service which people can enjoy using & paying for it willingly just like cellphone service. Next it will be political parties, prostitutes, chiefs, NGO’s, kaponyas, joining in collecting moneys through cell phone usage.
is it the more you buy talk time or the amount you buy? if for example I buy 10 cards for K10.00 each per month and one who buys 2 cards for K50.00 each, how much will each one pay since one will “dispose 2 used cards while the other will have 10 cards which cant even fill a car cup holder..what but one who has talk time directly sent to the phone without scratch cards? MTN will normally just send it straight to your phone, how much will such pay?
It is not related to how many scratch cards you throw or use or value. Like tv levy is not related to number of tv sets you own. As long as you have electricity account whether you have tv set or not you have to pay fixed amount of ZMW 3.00 per month. It will be either same ZMW 3.00 per Sim Card or more. They will not even provide you with free dust bin & you may even pay collectors again. For the months you don’t buy units, they deduct arrears next time you buy power or airtime. They are just looking for popular services people need & use to discourage them from using such. MMD realised that banking was popular to Zambians, they imposed medical levy on all account holders whether they used govt health facilities or not, then Sata crapped it but failed for TV levy.
Day light robbery!!! These guys must just start wearing masks!!!How do you start levying people who are already over-burdened with all sorts of taxes in this country?Honestly kang’ombe,is this the best you can come up with,(the lusaka mayor has already shown signs of dementia).Let us first start by power (both political and economical) devolution.There is so much waste (check annuall auditor’s report) through the current central governance.Public officials are always mentioned in this report on how they abuse public funds,yet they go scott-free without being held accountable or prosecuted.Unless these issues are resolved,drop the idea of introducing another conduit for pilfering.
This what you get when you get a student staight from College/university (Kang’ombe) who has never done any decent job to EARN a salary but plunges straight into politics. He has no idea of what it means to earn a salary by a decent day’s work except by yapping gibberish from Monks square to Mayoral office. My foot!
Awe ama taxes yacilamo. That’s how they did with ZNBC tax. We pay but there are no improvements on ZNBC programs
It appears Zambians don’t like to pay for the service ? Come to the western world just for two weeks than you lean how to pay bills.
These two chaps share a brain. that brain is the size of a flea’s left testacle. Very poor joke try again
Those of us who live in the western world are able to see how tax collected works for the people. One of the visible works is high standard of cleaniness. Equally, African countries can make Africa a better continent to live in, a continent free from cholera and other air and waterborne diseases. However, it calls for sacrifice to attain such standards as government should be bold enough to collect tax from airtime, beer and cigarettes. Increasing the price of beer and cigarettes does not only multiply tax but it discourages citizens to consume in excess.
No argument there if there’s good delivery and good accountability.
This is non start. And Nkana Water must stop charging Sewerage Levy on water bills because some of us don’t use their system.