Indian Express 20.01.2010
Civic body’s water tax arrears stand at Rs 27 crore
The water tax arrears of Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation which now stand as high as Rs 27.52 crore have forced civic officials to take initiatives to recover the pending dues from the defaulters at the earliest.
Pravin Tupe, joint city engineer (water supply), said, "We have a target of collecting anything between Rs. 45 to 50 crore as tax this year to clear the arrears."
The civic body gets a lion's share of its income from octroi. It also earns substantial revenue from building permissions, property tax and water tax. PCMC earns an average revenue of Rs. 750 crore every year from octroi. This is followed by property and water tax. But, in the past four years PCMC has fallen short of its water tax targets which has led to accumulation of arrears, even dropping to less than half of the target in some cases.
In the financial year 2004-05, PCMC had a target of Rs 21.89 crore as water tax, but could manage to only collect Rs 11.87 crore. In 2005-06, the target was Rs 30.44 crore, but only Rs. 9.82 crore was collected. The gloomy situation continued in 2006 -07 when Rs 22.71 crore was the target, but only Rs. 8.09 crore was collected.
In 2007-08, the target was increased to Rs. 51.19 crore, but Rs. 21.89 crore was recovered. In 2008-2009, a target of Rs 46.24 crore was set, but even that was not collected in full.
According to the norms laid out under JNNURM, for any civic body to be eligible for getting aid, it should collect 100 per cent water tax. The water meter system which was re-introduced by PCMC has irked citizens, leading to non-payment of charges and thereby accumulation of arrears
The PCMC has now decided to run an awareness campaign to make consumers pay up.
"We are appealing to people to pay up their water tax bills on time. Last year we had collected Rs 38 crore, inclusive of the previous arrears. But we have not yet given a thought to the idea of cutting water supply in case of non payment."
Out of the total water connections, A ward has 27,396 water connections, B ward 21,399, C ward 26,280 and D ward 28,000 .
But this does not represent the true picture, as there are also a large number of illegal connections. Out of a total of 1,7,502 water connections, 1,4,499 have been fitted with water meters.
