MCC told to recover water bill dues within two months

Minister for Urban Development and Housing U T Khader directed officials to initiate measures to recover the pending water bills within two months, during a review meeting at Mangaluru City Corporation here on Tuesday.

Executive Engineer Linge Gowda said that consumers owe Rs 16.42 crore to the Mangaluru City Corporation towards water bill in 2017-18. There are 144 consumers who owe above Rs 1 lakh towards water bill. The Ullal City Municipal Council too owes Rs 50 lakh while Mulki Town Municipal Council owes Rs 60 lakh towards water bill.

Following the direction from the minister, the officer shared the names of a few major defaulters.

MCC Commissioner Mohammed Nazeer said that Rs 34.50 crore was collected as water bill in 2015-16, Rs 33.13 crore in 2016-17. There are 95,000 water connections in the MCC jurisdiction. The bills to consumers are issued directly by the MCC through Multi-purpose Workers (MPW).

‘Issue notice’

The revenue officer said that around 8,000 properties in the MCC jurisdiction have to pay double tax for temporary door numbers issued to them. However, only 5,000 properties pay the double tax.

The minister directed the officials to issue notices to all the tax defaulters and initiate measures to collect the revenue.

The minister directed the officials to recover the pending dues in the form of trade licence, water bills and property taxes at the earliest. The progress should be shown within a month, he said.

Earlier, corporator Sudheer Shetty said that there is lot of problem in land conversion and single site approval, which needs to be rectified at the earliest.

‘Draft ZR’

Corporator Premananda Shetty urged the minister to direct the City Corporation officials to prepare a draft on zonal regulation (ZR). The MCC does not have proper building bye-laws as well. Even the houses for economically weaker section of the society programmes should be implemented effectively. The total ‘premium’ Floor Area Ratio (FAR) collected by MCC is Rs 131 crore. Unfortunately, only Rs 16 crore to Rs 17 crore is utilised for the development work in the MCC limits so far.

Corporator Harinath said that there is no method to cross check the property tax paid by the citizens in the form of self assessment scheme (SAS) in the corporation. The e-governance should be implemented effectively.

Corporator Vijay Kumar Shetty urged the Minister to set up an enforcement cell to ensure all the taxes are collected effectively in the City Corporation.

Skill game centres

The minister asked whether a city cannot be developed as a smart city without the presence of skill game and video game centres and massage parlours. “There is not even one skill game, video game or massage parlour centre in my constituency. Why are such centres required for Mangaluru? Can’t we develop without such centres,” he asked.

Raising the issue of mushrooming of unauthorised skill game centres in Mangaluru, the councillors in the review meeting said that in the name of recreation clubs, several massage parlour centres have come up in the city. There is a need to check such unauthorised centres, they pointed out.

When the officials could not explain the mushrooming of skill game centres, the minister said that a meeting of MLAs and the City Corporation mayor will be convened shortly to discuss on the measures to check such centres.