‘Garbage collection fees has been implemented in Margao’
Margao: Chairperson of the Margao Municipal Council (MMC) Damodar Shirodkar on Saturday reiterated that the Margao municipality has not yet implemented the revised rates of the house tax contradicting the claims of many citizens that the civic body has already started collecting the same.
“We have started collecting the garbage tax from the citizens as per the recent notification of the government. If we do not collect the garbage tax, the auditors will create problems for us. We have however not implemented the revised rates of the house tax. I will take the councillors into confidence in this regard before going for the new rates,” he reiterated.
The owner or the occupant of each of the residential house or flat has to shell out `900 for a year which is an additional burden of `300 whereas for the commercial premises the house tax is set as per the occupied areas as against its earlier general annual fees of `1,800.
“We have a total of 35,767 residential premises, 15,470 commercial premises and 9,487 garages and open spaces within the MMC jurisdiction. I have collected the data of the existing structures. I have written to the government asking for guidance before bringing all the un-assessed government quarters into the taxpaying ambit, since the MMC is collecting their waste as well. There are electricity department quarters, police quarters, WRD quarters etc, which can fetch us good revenue,” the chairperson Shirodkar said.
Sources informed that the Margao municipality can double its revenue if the untapped revenue is collected. “If the MMC starts collecting garbage fees from the hundreds of un-assessed houses along with the nominal arrears, then the civic body will not require to increase the house tax or enforce revised rates.
It may be recalled that the MMC has implemented a 50% increase in garbage collection fees for the residential units effective from this month. It is also pertinent to note that the civic body is spending crores of rupees on garbage collection. MMC bears cost of ` one lakh daily on the two waste collecting contractors.