HT Correspondent
SIVASAGAR, June 26: As a Local Self Government, the Sivasagar Municipality Board (SMB) is perennially beleaguered by financial crisis for many reasons. Some of them are irrational appointment policy, financial mismanagement, politics over primary duties and responsibilities towards the taxpayers, and awful lack of gut to raise tax from the influential section. While it takes immediate action against petty traders and vendors on the roadside for crossing the line, it gets jittery when serving notices to big business establishments, Nursing Homes, Multi-stores shopping complexes, Hotels, etc., and government offices for giving urban property tax.
Mrinali Konwar, the chairperson of the SMB on Wednesday had to answer a barrage of questions on these issues from the media persons in a press meeting in her office.
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Mrinali Konwar said that the SMB has over the years an accumulated property tax of around Rs 11 crores due to it from various houses, companies, and government offices. But despite repeated notices, some of the houses and establishments do not even bother to send them a reply. The SMB is yet to receive Rs 47, 65, 214 property tax from the 571 government office buildings within the municipality area. After receiving a sizeable amount this year’s tax collection has gone up to over Rs 6 crores and yet it is not free of anxiety as the monthly expenditure on salary head alone is Rs 55 lakhs (annually Rs 6.6 Crore).
Regarding traffic congestion in the town, Konwar said, the SMB has made plans to widen the roads. However the contractor dug up both sides of the AT Road from the ASTC Tinali to the KPM Chaliali which has created a chaos along the road with no place for parking vehicles, and uprooting the roadside vendors. The nursing homes and the shopping malls in the town violate the civic rules freely by discouraging parking cars in their limited parking slots while creating huge traffic congestion on the main roads. The footpath built along the Boarding road from KPM Chaliali, the repairing works of the footpaths and the pool constructions in Babupatty, etc development works are being done with financial grants from the 15th Finance Commission. Therefore, the SMB does not have much problem in attending to the civic problems of the taxpayers like flash flood, footpaths encroachment by vendors etc, but the SMB remains indifferent to them.
