MARGAO
As the Margao Municipal Council (MMC) backtracked on the move to hike fees on a host of services offered by the Civic body on Friday, the Shadow Council for Margao on Saturday thanked The Goan in a special way for highlighting the issue in its daily.The Goan had earlier this week highlighted how the MMC proposed to hike fees on a host of services likely to affect the common man.
While expressing satisfaction over the fact that the SCM succeeded to make the Margao Municipal Council realise and differ the proposal to hike several taxes/fees that were listed to be hiked enormously, the Shadow Council, on behalf of all the citizens thanked The Goan for highlighting the issue in its daily.
The proposal for hiking of fees/charges was listed in the Council meeting for approval, without proper study and reasoning SCM Convener Savio Coutinho said. “On what basis, the Chairperson of MMC thought of proposing the unjustified rates is something difficult to digest for the citizens. So also whether such arbitrary proposals were legally in order had not been considered by the Council,” he asked.
Even as the SCM welcomed the decision of the Council to differ its proposal, the Shadow Council strongly condemned the Council for its inaction in tapping the sources from where several crores of rupees revenue could be earned annually. “We truly fail to understand why the Council and the leaders controlling the Council develop cold feet when it comes to collection of taxes from certain vote banks and other unassessed premises, including the markets," Coutinho stated.
He questioned: "The most ironical proposal of the Council was the attempt to fix the minimum rate of rent receivable by private commercial premise owners. How could the Council even think of setting a minimum rent of Rs 10,000 per month for private commercial premises, when the Council very happily accepts rent of Rs 50 to Rs 100 from Council-owned premises in the Municipal markets?"
He said there are scores of privately owned commercial premises that are located in very interior areas, which fetch rentals much below Rs 10,000, and the Council intends to impose a rental of Rs 10,000 per month to calculate the revision of house tax for such premises rented out. This is the most absurd thing of the Council to come up with, he said further.
