A garbage-collection co-operative will be launched in HCM City’s Binh Thanh District as part of a project run by the city’s Co-operative Alliance. Members of the co-operative will include private organisations, households or individuals contracted to collect rubbish, according to Sai Gon Tiep Thi newspaper.
Each co-operative will have a membership of 200 who will collect the fee for the co-operative.
The entire fee will go to the co-operative, which will not be obliged to pay 10 per cent of it to city wards, as previously required.
As a member of the co-operative, each worker will receive social security, medical insurance, periodic medical examinations and protective work clothes.
Members of the co-operative will receive financial support to buy trucks to replace homemade three – or four-wheeled carts.
Ta Van Quang, deputy head of Binh Thanh District’s Private Garbage Collection Organisation, said most commercial investors in the field would hesitate to join the co-operative because they could lose managerial control.
Individual garbage collectors are also concerned about their salaries under the new scheme.
Hoang, a garbage collector, said the payment for individuals was only one-third of the rubbish fee that households or organisations pay.
For example, a worker who collects rubbish and takes it to the entrepot station receives VND164,780 (US$9) per tonne, although the total fee is VND420,950 per tonne.
Hoang said the payment was too low because petrol costs must be borne by the collectors.
In addition, the VND35 million ($1,950) given to co-operative members to change new vehicles is insufficient because the trucks required by the cooperative cost VND135 million each.
Binh Thanh District’s Private Garbage Collection Organisation currently has 800 labourers, 20 rubbish vans, 50 three-wheeled vehicles and 125 motorised and non-motorised flat-bed carts.
The organisation said fees from a total of 100,000 households could be collected. Households on major streets would pay VND20,000 fee per month and those on narrow alleys would pay VND15,000 per month.
The organisation said its turnover could reach VND18 billion ($1 million) per year, 10 per cent of which would be used to pay salaries for management.
However, many garbage collection workers said that figure was unrealistic, citing the possibility that many customers might not pay.