PORT BLAIR: Since inception, the Port Blair Municipal Council has been striving to execute its mandatory task of maintaining sanitation, providing safe drinking water, street light, roads, footpaths, drain and other amenities in the city. A massive pool of workers is engaged in all the 24 Wards of the city to keep the city spick and span by collection of garbage and transferring them to the Dumping Yard. The sanitation efforts a major portion of the PBMC’s revenue generation/collection towards committed liabilities viz. wages, fuel charges, electricity charges, hiring of vehicles etc. Currently, the main source of revenue generation for the PBMC is Octroi, Property tax, Water charges, etc.
In view of the need to boost the coffers of the Municipal Council to ensure maximum utilization of manpower and machinery to keep every part of the city clean by regular disposal of garbage and providing other basic amenities, the Council has decided to levying taxes such as Tourism taxes, increasing octroi rates on IMFL/POL/Tobacco/Vehicle, paid parking and service charges on various categories of traders in the city for providing services at their doorsteps. The revenue so generated will be utilized for effective implementation of the solid waste management system, door to door collection of garbage and other civic amenities in the city for the citizens.
The Council will soon start on the paid parking services in the city by means the citizen can avail parking facilities to regulate, automate and in an orderly manner to park the vehicle in the designated parking slots to avoid traffic congestion with watch and ward. Besides, the Council has taken few steps to augment the revenue collection a drive has been initiated to gather long pending shop rents, property tax and water charges. The Municipal Council is in a process to switch over to introduce Unit Area Method to asses property tax in the city in consultation with the stake holders in an attempt to reduce corruption at all levels. The Council also initiated efforts to collect the taxes through online/CSC to make it user friendly and considering option of self-assessment for tax submission, a release from the Chairperson, Municipal Council said.
