TEAM HERALD
MARGAO: With Margao Municipal Council’s new Chief Officer Naveen IAS, launching “mission revenue recovery”, civic babus are literally on their toes, working overtime to raise thousands of bills of households, traders and hoteliers to pay taxes for the current year.
While the sanitary section has despatched bills to around 125 hoteliers spread across the city to pay the garbage collection fees, the recovery cell has almost completed the process of raising 35,000 bills of households for payment of house tax to the civic body. The taxation section is also in the process of issuing bills to the 6000-odd traders for payment of trade licenses for the current year.
With the mission recovery closely monitored by the new chief Officer, civic officials have been found literally on their feet since Monday when Naveen took over reigns of the civic body. Taking cognisance of the manpower constraints affecting the civic body, it has been decided to despatch the house tax bills to the households through posts. Only in exceptional circumstances, when the bills return without being served on the party, officials will personally visit the households to ascertain the status of a particular house or office.
“Going by the plan put in place, I am confident that the Margao civic body will recover at least 50 per cent of the arrears within the next six months. We have set in motion the recovery process and the results will be there to see within six months”, Naveen told the media on Thursday.
Margao Municipal Council’s outstanding tax arrears are pegged at a whopping over Rs 10 crore with the municipal administration found wanting over the years in revenue recovery.
The fact that the new Chief Officer has laid stress on revenue recovery comes against the backdrop of the fact that the civic body had been found literally struggling to make the salary payments to the regular staff and door-to door waste collection workers, pegged at Rs 1.30 crore.
