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Waiver of unipole advertisers’ licence fee costs Mohali MC ₹7 crore
Already reeling under fiscal crisis, the Mohali municipal corporation (MC) is now staring at a loss of about ₹7 crore which it has incurred after the Punjab local
Already reeling under fiscal crisis, the Mohali municipal corporation (MC) is now staring at a loss of about ₹7 crore which it has incurred after the Punjab local bodies department waived the licence fee of unipole advertisers for six months (March to September).
The department has also given relaxation to the advertisers, allowing them to deposit only 50% of the licence fee till March 2021.
Every month, the Mohali civic body used to earn around ₹88 lakh from 102 unipoles within its limits.
MC commissioner Kamal Kumar Garg said, “We have suffered a huge loss as we were earning ₹88 lakh per month from unipole ads. We will ask the state government for more funds.”
In May this year, unipole advertisers had refused to pay their fee for five months amounting to ₹5 crore. They instead wrote to the civic body, seeking a waiver citing no revenue generation.
MC had referred the case to the local bodies department for approval, following which the fee was waived.
In February this year, in a major setback to the Mohali civic body, the Punjab local bodies department had imposed a cut of ₹141 crore in its budget for 2020-21. Against the proposal of ₹268 crore, which MC had forwarded in February, the local bodies department sanctioned only ₹127 crore.
Every month, Mohali MC spends ₹5 crore on paying salaries, power bills, fuel charges and maintaining city’s sanitation.
With the pandemic affecting its income, the civic body is now left with only ₹15 crore to meet its expenses for the remaining financial year.
While it expected to earn ₹10 crore in lieu of octroi, a duty levied on various goods entering Mohali, the civic body got just ₹5 crore from the state government.
Besides, neither the ₹25-lakh rent nor the tehbazaari fee (licence to squat and sell goods at a particular location) that generally amount to ₹5 lakh per month was collected by MC for the past five months.
On the account of property tax, residents have so far paid just ₹15 crore against estimated ₹25 crore, and water bill payments come to around ₹8 lakh instead of ₹25 lakh.
200 tenders await allotment
Meanwhile, more than 200 tenders of development works worth ₹30 crore have not been allotted in last one year. These projects pertain to development of parks, laying of paver blocks and construction of footpaths, repairing of roads and setting up outdoor gyms.
