Mayor of Chisinau Ion Ceban said the PAS councilors’ demand to annul the cleanup tax is cheap populism. According to him, these councilors more often stage events with a rostrum in front of the Chisinau City Hall as the election campaign for them started, IPN reports.

“The cleanup tax was approved by the municipal councilors two years ago. This is of 10 lei a month. Owing to the delays at the central level, the introduction of the tax was put off for this year. We don’t know if the created situation is due to technical glitches or to bad intentions. Pensioners also received notices. This is an error generated by the Center of Information Technology in Finance, which is a central authority. Corrections are now being made there manually. Discussions are being held with the Center,” stated Ion Ceban.

The mayor said the Party of Action and Solidarity increased people’s gas bills to 4,000, 7,000, 10,000 lei a month, raised the charges for electrical energy, for  heat and signed many other dubious contracts that were classed as “state secret” or “commercial secret”.

“The PAS knows that even the potential approval by the CMC of a new decision to this effect will be illegal and the decision could not be implemented as the budget parameters were adopted and cannot be changed at this stage. There is no legal mechanism for refunding the made payments or another mechanism that would enable not to pay this tax,” stated Ion Ceban.

According to him, Chisinau is now one of the cleanest European capital cities. The costs incurred for cleanup in the city come to over 300 million lei a year.

The mayor said that such a tax is imposed in many localities in Moldova and can reach there 144 lei a year.