Residents and businesses that do not pay their garbage-collection bills may have their electricity cut off in the next few days, Phnom Penh’s garbage collection company said Tuesday.
The power cuts are the key enforcement mechanism in an agreement between the collection company Cintri and the municipality, which was reached last week after Cintri briefly halted street cleaning operations and reduced garbage-collection service.
“Hopefully this agreement will be enforced,” Pascal Patrice, operations manager for Cintri (Cambodia) Ltd, said Tuesday. “Otherwise, it’s difficult to provide service without revenue. We’ve been patient. Changes need to happen.”
Cintri, the municipality and Electricite du Cambodge, the state-run utility company that Cintri hired to collect its bills, are expected to release a joint statement detailing the agreement today.
On Oct 24, Cintri announced it would lay off 400 of its 900 employees after losing $2.5 million since taking over as Phnom Penh’s garbage collector and street cleaner nearly 14 months ago.
As the streets filled with trash, City Hall brokered a deal last week to get Cintri to restore services, promising that clients who have not paid their bills will have their electricity turned off.
Though that was the intention when Cintri signed a deal with EdC last year to include the garbage-collecting fee on electricity bills, it never happened.
Patrice blamed the inaction on the national election. “No one wanted to make a move,” he said.
Tan Kim Vin, director general of EdC, could not be contacted on Tuesday.
An official at EdC said that
the electric company never planned to turn out the lights for clients who neglected to pay for Cintri’s services.
“If people did not pay Cintri’s garbage-collecting fee, we never cut off electricity,” the official said. “We only cut off service if people did not pay for electricity.”
Cintri is currently forming a list of residents and businesses that have not paid their garbage collection bills. The delinquent bill payers will receive a final notice, which Patrice said could happen as early as today. If they still do not pay, their electricity will be turned off.
Sok Leakhna, the municipality’s deputy cabinet director, said Tuesday that major hotels, restaurants and gas stations that do not pay for Cintri’s services will be the first to lose electricity.
“EdC will not go after poor people,” he said. “They will select the rich people who do not pay.”
Sok Leakhna did not name the businesses that have not paid their bills.
Cintri appealed to the business community in its statement announcing the service reductions on Oct 24.
“The decision does not belong to Cintri, it belongs to you, the residents of the municipality of Phnom Penh and especially the business community,” the statement said. “You will have to decide if a clean city is better for your living standard and to attract serious investors, which will lead to long-term development of your country.”
In the past 10 years, eight garbage collection firms have closed their doors because they were unable to collect fees from Phnom Penh residents.
