The government is looking to introduce service fees for garbage collection on New Providence, according to Minister of State for Finance Peter Turnquest.
"Garbage continues to be free for private residences, yet we have a crisis at the landfill and Nassau is generally unclean," said Turnquest during a meeting of the Rotary Club of West Nassau at Poop Deck at Sandyport.
"These are services that are provided to the public and they have to be paid for. The question is do you pay for those services that are provided to individual homes through taxation or through user fees.
"I submit that a more efficient way is through appropriate service fees so that we balance the cost of providing the service specifically with the revenue from that activity.
"Such fees will make the system more efficient."
He also noted that water rates have "not been reviewed since the 1970s".
"I don't have to tell you about the increase in subsidies that we've had to give to the Water and Sewerage [Corporation]," Turnquest said.
He stressed though that the government is not going to increase the rate of any utility.
Following his speech, Turnquest was pressed on the government's consideration of service fees for garbage collection.
"We have to make some decisions," he said.
"I know you all in Nassau are not used to paying for the service, but in Grand Bahama we pay for it all the time. We have arguably the best sanitation service in the region.
"The cost of maintaining the landfill, of providing the service on the street, there is a cost attached to that for the Bahamian government.
"You have to pay for it one way or the other, either through taxes or through user fees. The reality is that the taxes that we have been collecting to date have not kept up with the cost of providing the service.
"We have no intention of raising taxes. So the first order of business for all of the utilities, all of these state-owned enterprises, is to do their own internal reviews and just as the government is cutting back on 10 percent and scrubbing each of its accounts to make sure that we get value for money, we expect them to do the same.
"Hopefully that will yield the kind of savings that we need."

Click here to read more at The Nassau Guardian