Mayors seek OTS policy for water arrears

Rajmeet Singh

Advertisement

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 24

Ahead of the urban local bodies elections, mayors of the Congress-ruled municipal corporations are “eagerly waiting” for the Punjab Government to announce one-time settlement (OTS) policy for settlement of arrears of water supply and sewerage charges, which are running in crores of rupees.

In Patiala Municipal Corporation, arrears of the water supply and sewerage charges add up to nearly Rs10 crore, while in Jalandhar and Ludhiana Municipal Corporations, the arrears add up to nearly Rs30 crore and Rs350 crore, respectively. There are a number of cases where the end users have not paid their dues for years altogether.

As per the data compiled for the collection of property tax, there are over 21 lakh residential units in 19 municipal corporations.

The elected representatives want the Local Government Department to announce similar relief to end users in the urban local bodies (ULBs) as was announced in November last year for the recovery of outstanding house tax on the pattern of OTS.

“Announcing a moratorium for a period of three months as it was done in the case of house tax would help the fund-starved urban local bodies recover the principal amount from the users,” said Sanjeev Bittu, Mayor of the Patiala Municipal Corporation.

It is learnt that the matter has been under consideration for a while. However, the subject of extending the OTS to recover the outstanding water supply and sewerage charges was not included.

Mayor of the Jalandhar Municipal Corporation Jagdish Raja said, “The government has to decide a cut-off date to recover the dues. In many cases, the bills are running into thousands of rupees. Also, there are many cases of overbilling that have to be settled.”

Sources in the government said the elected representatives had pointed out that with the financial year ending in March and the upcoming elections to the urban local bodies, a populist decision would not only go in favour of the government, but would also generate revenue.

Mayor of the Ludhiana Municipal Corporation Balkar Singh said the matter was taken up with Local Government Minister Brahm Mohindra and he was hopeful of the announcement soon. He said the amount of actual arrears could turn out to be less once the disputes of overbilling were addressed.