MARGAO: The abolition of Octroi tax has created a major impact on the revenue generation of Margao Municipal Council (MMC), which has now resulted in a financial crisis, leading to shortage of funds to pay the staff and even to cater to the monthly expenses.
It was revealed that with Covid pandemic, and no dedicated recovery officer for the past three years has further worsened the situation leading towards non-payment of house and commercial taxes.
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The Margao municipality has been in discussion during the last few days pertaining to the issue of shortage of funds to pay staff salaries and other workers which is almost touching Rs 2 crore per month. The civic body was even forced to break the fixed deposits last month so that the workers were not deprived of their monthly payment. With no other alternative, the Chief Officer Agnelo Fernandes along with the council members have now initiated special recovery drives to collect the pending dues which are almost touching Rs 20 to Rs 22 crore.
When Herald tried to go into the depth of the issue, it was revealed that the abolition of Octroi tax, besides other few issues, has resulted in the civic body going bankrupt.
Speaking to Herald, the Chief Officer, besides few other Councillors and officers at the civic body confessed that the abolition of Octroi tax in 2016 is one of the major reasons which has stopped the revenues of the civic body.
“There are nearly 10 petrol pumps in the jurisdiction of Margao Municipal Council and the civic body used to get revenue in crores of rupees from these petroleum outlets. However, everything has stopped since the abolition of Octroi tax,” said the Chief Officer.
He further said that the sudden stoppage of such a big amount has left the civic body to face financial crisis, which has now been exposed.
“Octroi is not the only reason, COVID has also forced the households and owners of commercial establishments from not paying taxes. The Covid pandemic has also slowdown constructions activity which was one of the major sources of revenue generation,” said Agnelo.
There are 304 permanent and nearly 250 regular workers engaged by the civic body. Salary amount of these workers besides other expenses amounts to almost Rs 2 crore per month but generating this revenue has become a major problem for the council.
Councillor Sagun Naik said no one can deny the impact of abolition of Octroi tax which has created a major problem for the civic body.
“The point is that there is no other alternative to generate the revenue, after the abolition of Octroi tax. Shockingly, the government has also not made any arrangements to compensate for the losses due to Octroi tax”, he alleged.
According to him, the Margao council has the capacity to be a self-reliant civic body. However, with no recovery officer for the last three years has only lead to worsening of the financial conditions.
“I had raised this issue at the second meeting of the new council, and had urged the council to approach the government and ask for alternative arrangements to fill the gap of revenue generation caused due to the Octroi but nothing has happened to date,” said Sagun.
He further said that the head of the civic body needs to take this issue seriously and work out a solution, and also to make the recovery section active.
At the moment the civic body has prepared a list of defaulters who have not paid their taxes, and the numbers of defaulters are in the thousands.
“We have prepared a ward wise list of defaulters and there are minimum 300 to 500 defaulters in each ward who have more than Rs 10,000 outstanding dues, besides several commercial establishments are yet to pay their taxes and renewal fees amounting to lakhs of rupees”, said Lyndon Pereira, Chairperson MMC.
