Warangal Urban: District Collector and GWMC Commissioner Prashant Jeevan Patil has stressed the need to increase the revenue of the civic body to take up more development works. He also said that the number of the water meters need to be increased from nearly 5,000 to one lakh so as to increase the revenue. In an interview with Telangana Today, Patil said that he had also observed evasion of the tax in the trade licence fee.
Q: There are reports that the Greater Warangal Municipal Corporation (GWMC) is unable to garner sufficient revenue due to different reasons. How are you going to fix them?
Ans: Yes it is true. The GWMC is finding it hard to generate adequate revenue other than the funding from the State and Central governments. GWMC’s main sources of income are property tax, Vacant Land Tax (VLT), water charges and trade licence fee. Though it can generate at least Rs 100 crore as revenue, it is getting only around Rs 75 crore. In view of that, we have decided to bring more houses (property assessments) into the tax bracket, so that we can earn at least Rs 10 crore to Rs 15 crore additional income. On the other hand, we are also going to fix water metres to at least one lakh connections and collect the water fee based on the consumption.
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Q: What about the building permission fee?
Ans: Through building permission fee, we are collecting around Rs 70 crore. We are also planning to increase the fee to generate additional revenue. We can get at least Rs 18 crore additional revenue through this. We are also planning to collect the VLT in a strict manner. The taxes on the commercial establishments like cinema theatres, function halls will also be increased.
Q: What is the status of the waste user charge collection?
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Ans: Waste user charges were only 10 per cent in the past. But now it has increased to 50 per cent. There is a need to create awareness among people about paying the garbage user charges.