ROQUE DIAS | NT
Margao
Collection of sopo, the fee collected from vendors and others in the state, has been a sloppy business in Margao making the municipality pay dearly with revenue loss over the years.
The sopo loss could run into lakhs of rupees as contractors fox and hoodwink MMC officials. They often pull the strings with councillors to renege on paying the tendered amount to the civic body for a particular financial year.
The municipality also fails to complete the procedures for sopo auction on time, which helps the contractors dodge on sopo collection and payment to the body in the commercial city of the state.
In fact, vendors, who put up their stalls during feasts in Margao, filed several complaints before chief officers on the sopo collection.
A year-wise review of shoddy sopo collection is enlightening. Sopo contractor D Shirodkar accepted the bid for the financial year 2013-14. He, however, failed to pay the civic body as per the agreement, forcing the municipality to move court. Interestingly, the civic body won the legal battle, but later failed to recover the dues.
Mysteriously, the file pertaining to the sopo tender went missing from the administration office.
For the financial year 2014-15, the then accountant did not take the bank guarantee of the sopo contractor. The accountant was taken to task by the then chief officer Narayan Sawant. The contractor collected the sopo from vendors for two months, but later abandoned the Rs 42 lakh-contract for the fee collection.
The financial year 2015-16 saw the tender evincing lower bidding; there are no records suggesting that the money, as stipulated in the agreement, was paid by the contractor.
The bidding for the sopo tender still went down in the financial year 2016-17 when Goa Forward Party-backed chairperson Babita Prabhudesai was at the helm. And the revenue loss continued inexorably.
The financial year 2017-18 witnessed a legal rigmarole on bidding procedures, which however failed to
ameliorate the revenue situation.
The sopo contract was tendered for Rs 65 lakh in the financial year 2018-19. However, the contractor failed to pay the civic body the amount forcing the body to terminate the contract.
The cheque of Rs 28 lakh issued by the contractor drew blank forcing the municipality to forfeit the Rs 17-lakh bank guarantee. In fact, the civic body suffered a loss of Rs 6 lakh, and took upon itself to collect the sopo.
The story of sopo collection was no different for the financial year 2019-20. The sopo contactor collected the fee from the vendors but developed cold feet to pay the agreed amount to the municipality.
The same sopo contractor wrote to the municipality pleading that he should be given concession in the payment of the tendered amount since he suffered loss due to the lockdown of March 2020, which was imposed in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
The municipality, as per the direction of the directorate of municipal administration, then started collecting the sopo itself till the time the tender was floated for 2020-21.
But several employees of the civic body did not move about collecting the sopo in the light of coronavirus, making the municipality suffer losses in the last few months.
The employees collected the sopo of Rs 7,000 per day from vendors as against Rs 15,000 collected by the contractor In the past.
It is pertinent to note here that the sopo tender floated for the year 2020-21 was cancelled after chairperson Pooja Naik pointed to the procedural lapses.
