TBILISI, DFWatch — Tbilisi City Council has solved the issue of trash collection fee, which is calculated based on how much electricity a household consumes.

On Thursday, the council decided to reduce the trash tariff to half for five months from November till May.

In this five month period people will have to pay 2.5 tetris instead of 5 tetri per kilowatt hour.

The socially vulnerable will still have benefits already in force.

Tbilisi City Hall changed the way of calculating the trash collection fee one year ago. The trash fee was made a function of how much each household consumes of electricity, which means that the more electricity a family spends, the more it will have to pay for trash collection.

This was highly unpopular in the capital. Many people claim their fees have doubled.

In the election campaign, the National Movement party of President Mikheil Saakashvili distributed 1 000 lari vouchers (USD 600) to each household to pay for fees for the next four years.

But since that party lost its majority in parliament, Tbilisi Council is now reviewing the issue again and preparing an alternative model for paying the trash fee.

Winter is a period when families spend more electricity than in summer, that’s why a five month period was picked.

The Council will approve this initiative on Friday.