City Corporate & Business Plan - Municipal

Chapter ñ 9 Final Report: Ambur Municipality
The collection efficiency of water charges is extremely poor at 14%.
The following measures to be taken for strengthening the collection process and
organization to ensure overall levels of efficiency in order to improve and sustain
collection efficiencies:
Implement door-to-door collection mechanism, whereby property tax and
water charges are collected from every household by the municipality staff.
A separate collection team to be formed for this purpose, which will visit all
the households and collect tax. A mobile collection van has been provided
for this purpose in the FOP, which will help the staff in collection mechanism.
Launch a focused drive on existing arrears.
Conduct one time settlement scheme for old arrears and incentives
payments through marginal rebates for arrears > 5 years.
Implement payment due date along with a 90 day grace period during
which payments would involve a nominal interest payment.
Payments beyond the grace period should include a steep penal charge to
encourage payments on time.
Work with GoTN to moot creation of a special tribunal for speedy disposal of
properties under litigation.
In case of disputed property tax, the assessee should first pay the tax under
protest as in the case of excise or customs and then take necessary legal
course. The Act should be modified in such a way that no legal recourse
should be available to the assessee without paying the tax under protest.
The billing mechanism, accounts and DCB Register should be fully
computerized. This will help the Municipality in providing ready information on
defaults and help in speedy recovery process.
With regard to improvement in collection efficiency of water charges, the
Municipality should first improve the service levels. The Municipality should
conduct a survey on the present service levels and identify places where
service levels are good. The Municipality should then do a focused drive on
these blocks with good service levels and implement various collection
measures given above.
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