Team Herald
MARGAO: Margao Municipal Council on Friday approved a surplus budget of Rs 64,53,98,011 after some heated discussions over circulating two different papers of budget documents to the councillors and Chairperson Dr Babita Prabudessai had to instruct the chief officer to issue a memo to the officials concerned.
As the budget was being discussed, councillors like Doris Texeira, Rupesh Mahatme, Terence Barbosa Jafar Budhani and Manoj Masurkar pointed out that the figures on the documents provided to them differed from the figures on documents provided to others.
Chief Officer Johnson Fernandes clarified that at the Standing Committee meeting some changes were suggested in the budget and opined that maybe some councillors got the budget copies with the corrections made after the Standing Committee meeting.
“Even I have got a copy of the old budget,” said Dr Babita wondering why such an incident should happen in the first place and directed the chief office to take disciplinary action against the officer responsible for distributing two different set of budget papers.
Following various questions from the councillors about the presence of certain heads where no income is accruing to the council, Chief Officer clarified that those heads had to be shown this year and assured that in the future budget heads like octroi, income from slaughter house, charges for destruction of stray dogs, tuitions, etc would not be shown.
As he explained that the amount received as sanitary tax from households and business establishments was available separately on the software, he was asked to provide the figures separately in the budget documents too.
He was also asked to show all the the expenditure on the dog shelter under one head instead of the two heads as was done in the document. Similarly
After much discussion, Rupesh Mahatme was convinced about the need to provide Rs. 10 lakhs for cattle pound keeper and also Rs. 50 thousand towards feed for animals. Incidentally one 17 of the 25 councillors were present for the meeting.
Johnson also explained to the councillors that the council was collecting 10 years tax from mobile tower owners as the lease is for that many years and cautioned that that money will accrue only after 10 years. However, Dr Babita said they have provided for receipt of Rs. 60 lakhs as many have not paid any fees to the council.
The budget was officially approved with Rupesh Mahatme proposing and Doris Texeira seconding the motion of adopting of the budget.
