Councillors during a meeting at Ravindra Bhavan at Baina.
Photo Credits: Vikram Nayak
VASCO
After being the first and the only municipal council in the State to operate a school, the Mormugao Municipal Council (MMC) is now all set to create another record by operating its own petrol pump at Sada.
MMC Chairperson Girish Borkar told reporters that he decided on out-of-the-box initiatives to look for new revenue-generation avenues to ensure that the MMC comes out of the financial crunch.
"We face a shortage of staff but we cannot take additional staff because we can’t pay salaries and there is a need to create avenues that can generate income. My friend had applied for a petrol pump licence and during the discussion, I realised that oil companies will set up a free petrol pump if there is land over 1,000 sq mtrs available.”
“It struck me that we have a lot of idle land and that the MMC can actually approach the oil companies and have its own petrol pump. I took up the matter with the chief officer who agreed and we placed the matter in the council meeting. In any case, we have fuel bills of around Rs 6 lakh every month for our vehicles and the new petrol pump could also be used to fuel our own vehicles and generate additional revenue," said Borkar.
Borkar said the MMC had identified two spaces for the petrol pump and had already shown it to the oil companies.
"An oil company liked one of the locations and agreed to set up the petrol pump. During the discussion in the council meeting, we decided to go ahead with the petrol pump idea but we will also see which company amongst HPCL, BPCL, Reliance or IOCL can give us maximum benefits,” said Borkar.
Borkar said he had also proposed to have pay-parking zones in various locations across Vasco. "We have seen that all major cities like Panaji, Margao, etc. have got pay parking and why should Vasco lag behind? This time, I have decided that we will not care about any objections on social media and requested our MMC Traffic Committee to at least start somewhere from now on.”
“We have planned pay-parking on a trial basis from mid-December so that we can also earn revenue and discipline haphazard parking in the various locations in and around the city," said Borkar.
