Default in payment of property tax for the last one year has led to shutdown of day-to-day operations for a brief while at the Solid Waste Management (SWM) facility in Jawahar Nagar landfill here on Wednesday.
Unbearable stench
Officials from the Jawahar Nagar Corporation locked down the entry gates into the facility for more than an hour during the day, which resulted in piling up of garbage trucks outside for close to a kilometre or two. This has affected timely garbage clearance in the city, and people from surrounding localities of the dump yard had to put up with stench emanating from the stranded trucks.
Though the SWM facility is being managed by Ramky Enviro Engineers Limited, property tax for the same was being paid by GHMC till a year ago, which, officials claimed, was as per the concessionaire agreement signed over a decade ago. The agreement signed by GHMC bestowed, among several other sops, waiver of property tax, on the concessionaire firm, though the site did not fall within the corporation’s jurisdiction.
Jawahar Nagar, a village panchayat when the agreement was signed, was later made a Nagar Panchayat, and since 2019, it has been a corporation. GHMC has stopped payment of property tax for the dump yard since it has been announced a corporation.The amount accruing towards the tax amounted to about ₹1.5 crore to ₹1.6 crore for a year, officials informed. Up till now for the current financial year, the amount due is over ₹1.36 crore.
“When Jawahar Nagar was a Nagar Panchayat, GHMC paid property tax regularly, as it was under a different department. Now that it has come into the purview of Municipal Administration and Urban Development, we have stopped payment of tax, and written to the government asking for waiver of the same. Jawahar Nagar corporation officials have locked down the gates for a brief while over the default in payment for the first quarter of the year, but we quickly resolved the issue through talks,” an official from GHMC clarified.
Jawahar Nagar landfill receives solid waste not only from the city, but also from several other corporations, and a letter will be addressed to the government seeking waiver of the tax on this ground too, officials informed.
Garbage from Jawahar Nagar too is sent to the dump yard, as also from the Secunderabad Cantonment Board, Bandlaguda, Nagaram, Badangpet, Nizampet, Dammaiguda, Thumkunta, Kompally, Dundigal, Medchal, Peeramcheruvu, Meerpet, Jillelaguda, and Manikonda.