Team Herald
PANJIM: Corporation of the City of Panaji (CCP) spends annually more than Rs 17,000 per capita and yet the services are far below the standard of some of the cities within the country which spend much lesser.
Praja Foundation in its study conducted over two months in September and October 2018 in the city presented its findings at a session on Friday before the CCP corporators and other stakeholders of the city, including the citizens.
Director of Praja Foundation, Milind Mhaske speaking to the media on the sidelines of the presentation said, “Per capita spent in Panjim is about Rs 17,000 which is way more compared to bigger cities. For example Delhi spends Rs 8,000 and Udaipur which is also a tourist city and size of population is almost similar to Panjim spends only Rs 2,500 whereas Panjim spends more than Rs 17000. That’s a huge amount. It’s not probably being used efficiently. That’s what came out in the session, the administrative management is not prudent.”
Stating that the corporators can keep an eye and raise these issues periodically, he said that the corporators are the trustees of the city and they need to work accordingly.
On the self-sufficiency in revenue generation, he said, “This city has a lot of potential to generate revenue without taxing citizens. Panjim is a tourist city and people love to come here. It has a rich heritage and the corporation needs to think of not only providing better services to the citizens and tourists and to do that what you need is money which can be generated through indirect taxation.”
The presentation cum consultation session of Friday was based on a two parts study of the capital city conducted in September and October in 2018. First a study on urban governance and reforms and existing governance and institutional models in place in Panjim were carried out mapping the implementation of the 74th amendment of the Constitution.
The second part consisted of series of interviews with elected representatives and the executive to understand the urban governance challenges from the perspectives of different stakeholders.
Milind informed that during the consultation one very prominent thing which came up was that the bylaws, which have not been written and the draft has been sent to the DMA and is pending approval. “It’s a low hanging fruit for me, if the councillors really wanted to get it approved and implemented then they could have created enough pressure and through mobilisation get it done. When you can do it for political issues why not for this,” he added.
CCP Corporator Vaidehi Naik said that the efforts of the Praja Foundation could fetch fruits only when the reports would be submitted to the State as well as Central government Urban Development Ministries.
