TEAM HERALD
MARGAO: Vested interests continue to hold the Margao civic body to ransom with repeated attempts to impose garbage collection fees on city hotels and restaurants once again coming a cropper.
Hopes were raised that the civic body would finally adopt the garbage collection fees for the city hotels and restaurants at its Wednesday meeting. However, instead of finalising the fees, the council has decided to constitute a panel comprising of the Municipal Chairperson, Chief Officer, Chairperson of the Sanitation Committee, sanitary inspector and others to work out a fee structure and to place the proposal before the council meeting.
Incidentally, at the last council meeting, the city fathers had resolved to revise the waste collection fees from the hotels taking into account that the proposed fee structure of Rs 80, Rs 60 and Rs 40 was considered on a higher side. Though the council had approved the revised rates, the minutes of the last meeting were mysteriously silent on the garbage collection fees.
The municipality’s repeated postponement of finalising the fee structures for the hotels, restaurants and bars assumes significance and comes against the backdrop of the highly critical audit report of the accountant general.
The report had highlighted the non-collection of fees towards door-to-door garbage collection and its disposal, both from hotels as well as bio-medical waste. “There are 148 hotels, 376 restaurants, 36 nursing homes and 310 clinics operating in the jurisdiction of the Margao Municipal Council. The door-to-door collection of garbage generated by these hotels and restaurants is done by the civic body by engaging men and machinery. For this purpose every month huge expenditure is met from the municipal funds towards wages, fuel and maintenance of vehicles/machinery without collecting any fee from these commercial institutions. The municipoal council could explore additional avenues for generating revenue by taking action to fix and collect fees towards garbage collection and its disposal”, the audit report stated, while seeking report from the civic body on the action taken to fix and collect fees for garbage collection and its disposal.
