Cuncolim Municipal Council (CMC) has started its campaign of collecting garbage fees and recovery of outstanding house tax and other tax arrears.
It may be recalled that the auditors had criticised the civic body for failing to recover the huge outstanding arrears.
Following this, Chief Officer Kedar Naik has initiated the campaign of recovering the huge outstanding arrears.
“We have deployed all the council support staff to collect garbage fees, house tax and other taxes,” said Kedar adding that the council staff has already started visiting the houses to collect garbage fees. For residences, the Council is charging a monthly fee of Rs 20 as garbage collection fee. Council is currently holding the door-to door garbage collection exercise on a daily basis.
The garbage collection fees rates for commercial establishments differ as they range from Rs 300-400 a month, while major factories and hotels are charged Rs 5,000 a month.
“Barring a few exceptions, we have received good response from the citizens and businessmen and are looking forward to getting a continuous revenue through garbage fees,” Kedar added
It may be recalled that CMC was one of the first councils to start the door-to-door garbage collection and was charging Re 1 per day for residences. Due to political intervention, the decision on the fee amounting to Rs 30 a month remained unchanged.
But now, Kedar has implemented the civic body’s decision to reduce the garbage collection fee to Rs 20 per month.
However, the civic body is looking at ways to address the issue of recovering the huge outstanding tax arrears and the council has issued notices to all house owners warning them of imposition of fines if there is a delay in the payment of house tax.
“There is a lukewarm response from the locals regarding house tax and other commercial fees,” said CMC officials.
