While our urban local bodies – mainly the municipal councils and corporation, have been regularly castigated for their functioning or non- functioning in many cases, let’s spare a thought for the constraints in which they work and the severe shortage of revenues they have primarily on account of their inability to recover massive dues from shopkeepers, from houses and other establishments running into crores of rupees. This has plagued all the major urban bodies, especially Panjim, Margao and Vasco. The state power department has warned that power supply to the municipal market complex in Panjim would be disconnected, because CCP has failed to pay Rs 3.12 crore since October 2015 for the power consumed. Similarly MMC (Margao and Vasco) have similar problems of dues mainly because of massive pending arrears from home owners, shopkeepers and other establishments.
Our urban bodies simply do not have the wherewithal to function any more. The power department may feel it is within its right to disconnect power supply to the market complex which CCP has to pay for. But this arm of the government doesn’t realise that another arm which is responsible for the running of Goa’s capital town, has been facing truant shopkeepers who have sub-let their shops more than once and are paying no share of their dues. Moreover, many shopkeepers, according to the CCP, have been illegally tapping into outside lines and drawing power for their shops. It is a fair point that the CCP should have cracked down on errant shop keepers, but is the CCP really free to do it. Powerful councillors with political godfathers, many of them who own shops themselves, have no desire to break this cozy status quo of carrying on businesses without paying for power.
Moreover the CCP for instance has over due rentals of properties and house taxes which has been pending for decades. But the biggest defaulter here is the government. It doesn’t pay taxes for its properties. Government arrears till June last year, amounted to Rs 7 crore. For obvious reasons the CCP is unable to seal government promises. But ironically, unfairly and very unfortunately, it faces the prospect of its own power supply cut off, by a government arm, the power department.
CCP has also asked a Delhi-based agency to prepare its credit rating so that the Corporation exactly knows its financial status is, but the status is really quite simple. Government bodies do not pay their dues to CCP and CCP doesn’t have funds to pay their own dues and gets blackmailed and pressurised by government.
But replace CCP with any of the MMC’s or any other corporations in Goa, the story is more or less the same. The Margao Municipal Council has to recover arrears of over Rs 15 crores and in turn has power dues as well. They too have the same story of shops in the market being illegally sub-let. At the same time four petrol pumps in the heart of the city have dues to be paid to the MMC. The petrol pumps had defaulted in their payments to the MMC for years now. The land which belongs to the MMC has been leased to the petrol pumps and they have demanded that the lands be leased to them once again.
The companies have disagreed to pay the new rents and have been insisting on the old rates. However, the MMC is not willing to rollback on rent increase and now has decided not to back down. Lately two of the pumps have agreed to clear a part of their dues. The total rent arrears of all the pumps is a massive Rs 60 lakhs. The Mormugao Municipal Council is equally in the doldrums. In 2015 it had outstanding arrears if Rs 11 crores.
The new government needs to address this on priority and do it ruthlessly. Our Urban bodies can function freely and discharge their responsibility only if they get a free hand to recover arrears and the best way to do it is to very firmly tell councillors, MLAs and other city politicians not to allow vested interests get in the way of the urban body recovering its dues.
