Sources close to the cooperative said this increase is being asked to compensate for the recent diesel increase, which has hiked their costs by 17 per cent.

It is also rumoured that the price of tipping municipal waste at the Taz-Zwejra facility at Maghtab will soon be raised from its present 33c per tonne.

Unconfirmed reports say it will be raised to Lm1 although this may not be done in one go. One likely outcome would see the price of a ton of municipal waste being dumped at Taz-Zwejra going up to 70c in the immediate future and thence to Lm1 at a later stage.

Contacted by this paper, WasteServ replied: “As has been stated by WasteServ Malta Ltd on various occasions, the cost of waste management is considerable. The Lm0.33c (exc. VAT) tipping fee, introduced in October 1997, does not reflect the costs involved, creating therefore an unsustainable situation.

“However, it is up to the government to decide how to sustain such a heavy subsidy.”

Government sources added that one reason for this price increase is due to some contractors mixing construction waste and municipal waste to dump it as mixed waste and thus benefit from the lower costs of tipping municipal waste but this was heavily discounted by the waste collecting cooperative sources.

Local council sources, who have recently seen government slash their budgets, have told this paper there is no way how they can accept this new demand for higher prices on the waste collecting contract they have signed over the past months.