RESIDENTS in Didim may well find out they have been charged a small sum for ‘environmental cleaning’.

It emerged when Voices was contacted by a couple of readers as they went to pay their council tax this week – as usually the end of January is the payment deadline for the first six months of the year.

Fortunately, council tax has NOT gone up massively compared to the  110 percent it had last year. This year’s tax has only nominally increased by about 5TL per person declared on the Tapu (title deed).

However, this environmental charge, which dates back to the second half of last year, and apparently relates to bin collections and solid waste removal.

This, element, has always been collected and rounded up within the council tax invoice to residents, but, at least, for two readers, they were handed a separate invoice for the environmental charge.

Breaking it down, the charge amounted to 15.89TL for the second half of 2015; a total of 74.44TL (37.22TL each for the two six-month segments of 2016). There was also a tax – KDV of 18 percent – totalling 16.26TL and 1TL for late payment.

From what we can ascertain from having spoken to council sources, the environmental cleaning charge covers just that: bin collection, workers walking the roads picking up rubbish and a street cleaning truck for the kerbsides.