Importers told to pay an €85 fee to waste management company Green MT for late registration risk being invoiced twice because the Malta Environment and Planning Authority insists it is not the company’s job to collect late registration fees on its behalf.
A letter sent by Green MT to importers on October 19 informed importers that they had “still not registered with Mepa and neither paid the Green MT (find invoice attached)”.
It explained that “due to delay, Mepa has increased the fee to €85 for registration (base 2009)”.
A Mepa spokesman confirmed that while Green MT was responsible for collecting the €35 registration fee to enlist in the waste packaging scheme, importers submitting late registrations would be invoiced with penalty fees by Mepa directly.
“Waste management companies such as Green MT only deal with registration. They have nothing to do with late registration penalties,” the spokesman explained.
Green MT CEO Joseph Attard said the sum of €85 mentioned in their letter was “a €35 euro registration fee and a €50 late payment penalty, imposed for the 2009 baseline year”.
Mepa, however, said there was an €85, not €50, penalty for late 2009 year registrations and that it was not up to Green MT to collect such penalties.
When informed that it was Mepa, not Green MT, that was meant to collect late registration penalty fees, Mr Attard said: “We do not collect penalty fees. We simply inform members of what the penalty fees are.”
He said the letter demanding the €85 payment was sent to a number of open-market sellers who had signed up to join Green MT but had not honoured their invoices.
“Letters were sent to importers who had first signed up with us but who were later offered a cheaper membership fee by our competitors, GreenPak,” he said. “They decided to sign up with them instead but never informed us.”
Mr Attard explained that the €85 payment involved a €35 registration fee and the other €50 consisted of “a minimum market placement fee, not a penalty”.
When it was pointed out that what he was saying contradicted the content of the letter Green MT had sent importers and even what he had said earlier, Mr Attard was adamant the letter was not misleading.
“The letter informs importers that Mepa has increased its fee and it has done so,” he said.
Mr Attard insisted that Green MT had not cashed the late payment fee of any importer. Some importers had called Green MT about the letter but no one had sent them a cheque for €85, he said. “I can assure you that we did not pocket a single €85 payment,” he stressed.
A Mepa spokesman said that, although it was not investigating the letter, it had written to Green MT on the matter in order to clarify the issue.
It reminded importers that the late registration fee for the 2010 base year would be €35. Online registration for the 2011 base year opens in January, with €10 being charged for online registrations and €35 for manual ones.