Mangaluru: Taking a jibe at officials for not achieving progress in MCC revenue generation, the Urban Development Minister Vinay Kumar Sorake warned that officials concerned will be responsible for the pending revenues.
He was chairing a meet on SMART City and a review meet of MCC development works and issues on Monday at MCC council hall.
The minister expressed dissatisfaction over the incapability of achieving the target of collecting property tax and recovering dues from revenue defaulters and directed the Mangaluru City Corporation (MCC) officials to fix a target of Rs 100 crore of revenue collection for the next financial year.
He also said that he will conduct ward-wise meetings to follow up the progress of revenue collection in the coming days.
The Deputy Commissioner (Revenue) Raju Mogavira, earlier said, out of Rs 55 crore target for the collection of property tax, Rs 26.5 crore has been collected in the current fiscal year. And in order to make the collection of property tax more user-friendly, software is being developed (that is in the final stage) to recover the data of tax payers. The software will help in e-filling of applications.
Member of opposition Premanand Shetty raised concerns over revenue figures given by the MCC officials and said; there are instances where the tax payment has been pending for the last eight to ten years. He also said that decentralization of work is not done and the zonal commission officials appointed to MCC are working for other departments which is also a reason for the poor progress in the revenue generation, and requested the minster to take action in this regard.
Former Mayor Mahabala Marla said that the collection of water taxes has not been up to the mark, owing to the irresponsibility of officers and urged the minister to initiate action against errant officers.
Member of Legislative Assembly J R Lobo suggested to separate garbage cess from property cess. He also said that all types of revenue collection should be brought under the limits of Deputy Commissioner (Revenue) to ease the process; even the water supply collection and engineers should be given maintenance work only. The MCC Commissioner was directed to issue an order soon in this regard.
The minister said, in response to a query by the opposition leader in the council Sudhir Shetty regarding the shortage of 1065 staff in the Department, that the steps have been initiated by the DC to appoint D group staff.. while the the appointment of the staff of A, B and C groups will be done through the KPSC and the necessary correspondence has been initiated in this direction, answering
The minister also conducted the review of works under Nagarotthana scheme.
Mayor Jacinta Vijaya Alfred, Commissioner Dr H N Gopalakrishna and MUDA Chairman Ibrahim Kodijal were present.
