MARGAO
Audit conducted by the Principal Accountant General, Goa has concluded that the failure of the Margao Municipal Council to do a tax reassessment based on the GIS mapping has resulted in substantial loss of revenue amounting to 17.21 crore.
That’s not all. The Audit had recommended in 2023 that the MMC conduct similar GIS survey in other Municipal wards for finding out the revenue leakage and to improve the financial power of the Civic body.
“In scrutinizing the Registers of demand & collection of house tax, sanitation tax and trade tax over this five-year period (2018-19 to 2022-23), it has been noted that no reassessment, of any tax, has been conducted, based on the data from the GIS survey report for the same duration. This failure to reassess has resulted in substantial revenue loss amounting to Rs1,721.1 lakh. Further, the MMC may conduct similar GIS survey in other 14 wards for finding out the revenue leakage to improve the financial power of the Municipal Council”, the audit had observed.
In fact, during the review of the GIS mapping file, audit noted that an agreement dated October 23, 2017, has been signed between the Margao Municipal Council (MMC) and M/s Transerve Technologies Pvt. Ltd aimed at implementing a GIS technology-based system to improve property tax collection for selected ward (Ward No 14), highly commercialized location within the MMC.
As per the terms of this agreement, the scope of work encompassed the following key aspects: (i) creation of a base map and (ii) Collection of property and taxation details, including a) Conducting a revenue survey, b) Gathering data related to door locks and refusal cases. c) Verifying and reconciling the collected data.
MMC paid Rs 2.73 lakh to
agency for GIS survey
The Audit has pointed out that the MMC had disbursed a payment of Rs 2.73 lakh on August 29, 2018, to M/s Transerve Technologies Pvt. Ltd. in exchange for their provision of the aforementioned services. Furthermore, the Chief Officer of MMC issued a completion certificate on October 23, 2018 confirming that the tasks related to the property tax database, GIS mapping implementation, and the development and hosting of the web-based application for property owner identification had been successfully accomplished. Sadly, the GIS mapping survey has not been implemented by the Civic body till date and the report is gathering dust in the Municipal record books.
