MERCES: With revenue drying up due to the abolition of house tax, the Santa Cruz Panchayat is now looking at alternate avenues to fill the empty coffers.
Sarpanch Tony Fernandes informed that from April 1, the panchayat has decided to collect a fee from premises which are rented out commercially in the village.
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“The owners of these premises will have to cough up one month’s rent to the panchayat as fee,” he informed and added that the panchayat is currently in the process of issuing notices to all such commercial premises.
House tax abolition dries VP coffers
TEAM HERALD
MERCES: The abolition of house tax may have brought cheers to many but it has posed all sorts of problems to the Santa Cruz panchayat which is now struggling to undertake even basic development work in the village as its coffers are almost empty.
Such is the financial situation at the Santa Cruz panchayat that its Sarpanch Tony Fernandes has admitted that the panchayat does not even have the funds to shift an electricity pole.
Speaking to Herald, Fernandes said the panchayat is presently facing a financial crisis as the revenue collection has dried up due to abolition of house tax and it is finding it difficult even to pay staff salaries.
“One of our major revenue used to come from house tax as we used to collect about Rs 10 lakh per annum from it,” he said and added that the panchayat has received Rs 3.42 lakh from the government as compensation, which is hardly enough to run the affairs of the panchayat.
Fernandes further said the panchayat is yet to recover over Rs 20 lakh as house tax arrears of the previous years but the villagers are not willing to pay it ever since the government announced abolition of house tax.
“Most of our revenue is spent on staff salaries, garbage collection, de-silting of drains and purchase of electrical goods,” he said while adding that this year the panchayat will find it difficult to de-silt drains and purchase electrical goods due to a lack of funds.
Fernandes said the government should re-think the decision and abolish tax only of those villagers owning a single house. “Those villagers owning two or more houses should be exempted from paying house tax of only one house while levying house tax for the other houses,” he opined. “Flat owners and those owning posh bungalows should not be exempted the house tax,” he suggested.
