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Cities backtrack on bag tax
Most of the cities planning to join a campaign to tax plastic bags have withdrawn from the program, saying that they were not ready to implement it
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ost of the cities planning to join a campaign to tax plastic bags have withdrawn from the program, saying that they were not ready to implement it.
Only nine out of 23 cities scheduled to start requiring customers to pay for plastic bags used when shopping at malls, department stores, supermarkets and other retail outlets starting Feb. 21 are ready to implement the policy set by the Environment and Forestry Ministry last year.
'Not all [cities will start requiring customers to pay] on Feb. 21,' the ministry's director general for dangerous toxic material and waste management, Tuti Hendrawati Mintarsih, said during a media briefing in Jakarta.
In fact, only one city, Bandung, is considered fully ready to implement the plan because it already has a regional regulation.
Besides Bandung, cities like Jakarta, Bogor, Banda Aceh, Makassar, Denpasar, Surabaya, Tangerang and Balikpapan have also stated their readiness to implement the policy, despite the lack of existing regulations.
'We have talked [with Jakarta]. The governor even said that he could implement the policy before Feb. 21,' the ministry's waste management director, Sudirman, said on Tuesday. 'Jakarta is the capital of the country, so it has to become a pioneer.'
Mayors of these nine cities have already issued written statements to pledge their participation in the program, especially after striking a deal with retailers in their respective administrations.
Some cities currently only had acting mayors, like Surakarta in Central Jakarta and Banjarmasin in Central Kalimantan, a condition that prevented them from making strategic decisions, including issuing regulations on plastic bag charges,
Earlier this year, the Indonesian Retailers Association (Aprindo) said that all modern retailers in 23 of the country's major cities were ready to implement the policy.
The 23 were Ambon, Balikpapan, Banda Aceh, Bandung, Banjarmasin, Bekasi, Bogor, Denpasar, Depok, Jakarta, Jayapura, Kendari, Makassar, Medan, Palembang, Papua, Pekanbaru, Semarang, Surakarta, Surabaya, Tangerang, South Tangerang and Yogyakarta.
The association chose Feb. 21 as the date to kick off the campaign so as to coincide with National Waste Awareness Day.
However, what has left most of the cities not ready to start the program is that the price to be charged to customers for plastic shopping bags has yet to be decided by regional governments.
The ministry has proposed a charge of Rp 500 per plastic bag and suggested that customers could get Rp 200 back if they return the bags to the retailers.
Aprindo, meanwhile, has proposed a Rp 200 charge for each plastic bag.
As there has been no agreement, the ministry plans to issue an order to regions that would serve as a guideline to formulate the price. Local governments would not be able to set a price lower than the benchmark set by the ministry.
The ministry had been conducting an online survey since Feb. 5 to get a response from the public regarding the plan.
As of Tuesday, 7,974 respondents had participated in the survey, with 87.2 percent of them saying that they would support the policy.
The survey also found out that 91.5 percent said that they were willing to bring their own shopping bags.
As for the ideal price, 32.6 percent chose Rp 500, while 23 percent chose Rp 1,000 and 21.5 percent chose Rp 2,000.
