Team Herald
VASCO: The Urban Development Minister Francis D’Souza said though there is no proposal yet to convert Mormugao Municipal Council (MMC) into Municipal Corporation, however considering the fact that MMC is class ‘A’ municipality and has the required number of population, it is eligible for conversion to ‘Corporation’.
“There is no such proposal yet, however, if MMC decides they can ask the government for conversion to Municipal Corporation. Also, if MMC becomes Corporation, we will have to give more engineers, officers etc,” he pointed out.
There are thirteen Municipal Councils in the state and Panjim is capital city and hence it is the only Municipal Corporation. Out of 13 municipal councils, three councils are class ‘A’ (Over 50,000 population), eight are class ‘B’ (40,000 population) and two fall in the category of class ‘C.’ Since Mormugao council has population of over one lakh and if they feel they can make themselves self-reliant then the council may put forth the proposal before the government to become as corporation,” he added.
D’Souza said that the Director of Municipal Administration (DMA) has recently moved a proposal before the government to asking the municipality to reduce its dependency on government funds for which government can extend all help in making the municipal bodies self-reliant.
“I don’t want municipal councils to be dependent on the government for funds. They should find ways to increase revenue and in turn government will help them by giving revenue-generating projects like markets, small malls, multi-storied parking etc,” he said, adding that DMA has proposed to fix terms for all municipalities to achieve a new status. Like five years for all class ‘A’ municipal bodies, seven years for class ‘B’ to achieve the new status.
He said that the urban development ministry has been making efforts to ensure that all municipal council constitutes full time recovery department. “Recovery is continuous process and we are trying to streamline things by putting recovery department in every council however while doing so we have been facing another problem that is shortage of staffs. Currently except for class ‘A’ and some class B municipalities other councils are having part time chief officers and this adds the problem as the part time chief officers are unable to devote their time in the councils and unless these councils get full time chief officer I cannot push them,”.
D’ Souza also claimed that though the state government has been providing different types of grants to the municipality but municipalities are not putting enough efforts to increase revenue source which will help them to reduce dependency on government grants. “We give them so much money as grants but the results are not good. At times we have seen that some municipalities are even unable to utilize some grants which make us feel that the councilors are not interested. If they have vibrant council then lot of things can be done,” he told.
