Hazard a guess as to how many years or decades it will take the Margao Municipal Council to recover the huge outstanding tax arrears, assuming the arrears are pegged at a whopping over
`10 crore?
The recovery target set by newly-appointed Chief Officer, Siddhivinayak Naik, to the municipal staff indicates that it may well take around 30 years, if not more, for the civic body to recover the huge arrears. For, the Chief Officer has fixed a meager recovery target of only `2.50 lakh per month as per the latest order issued by the Municipal Council. Both municipal officials and elected representatives have termed the tax recovery target as “peanuts”, considering the huge arrears staring at the civic body.
Officials in the know told The Goan that the Chief Officer ought to have fixed a minimum `30 lakh a month, an average of one lakh a day, if the civic body ever hopes to recover the huge outstanding arrears. Instead, the Chief Officer has made the task easy for the municipal staff by asking them to only recover around `8,333 a day, which works out to around close to `2.49 lakh a month.
That’s not all. The Chief Officer has even gone a step ahead by linking the recovery performance to the assessment of the Annual Confidential Reports of the employees manning the reconstituted recovery cell and also the probation period of the staff deployed with the recovery cell.
Questions are being raised in the corridors of the civic body as to how the Chief Officer settled for a meager target of `2.50 lakh when the tax defaulters voluntarily come on their own to pay the arrears, averaging a daily amount of over `5,000.
When The Goan contacted Margao Municipal chairperson, Dr Babita Angle, to shed light on the arrears recovery target set by the Chief Officer, she virtually laughed at the figure of `2.5 lakh a month, saying that the CO’s target will not lead the municipality anywhere.
“I have called for the statistics from the taxation section and will hold a meeting with the official concerned in a day or two. Definitely, the monthly target needs a review if the municipality hopes to effect the tax recoveries and enrich the municipal coffers,” Babita said.
Chief Officer, Siddivinayak Naik, however, said the monthly target is open for a review from time to time. “This is not a fixed target, but is open for a review on a routine basis. We have set the target and hope the municipal officials will achieve the same without any problem,” he said.
Questions are also raised as to why the same old officials are appointed to man the recovery cell when their performance in the recent past has been found wanting by the municipality.
“If the same old staff has been found wanting in effecting the recoveries, then why did the Chief Officer not opt for new hands for the job instead? It appears the Chief Officer has not properly understood the issue. It is surprising that the same old hands are back on the revenue recovery panel,” remarked a civic official.
Another official told The Goan that senior staff ought to be deployed on the field to recover the arrears instead of leaving the job to the workers and supervisors. Moreover, news is doing the rounds in MMC’s corridors that the municipality is trying to rope in a government official to head the recovery cell when his performance has been below par during his stint in office.
