“We have paid rent to some hoteliers for allocating rooms. Some rooms were for housing doctors and nurses and some for quarantine purpose,” said District Collector Naval Kishore Ram. (Representational)
The district collectorate on Sunday said hoteliers whose properties have been temporarily acquired to house healthcare staff or quarantine Covid-19 patients will be paid rent as per government rates. The Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad municipal corporations, however, said no rent will be paid for college buildings, marriage halls and other private buildings acquired by them.
Private owners whose properties have been acquired had approached civic officials and the collectorate, seeking rent and maintenance expenses. “We have paid rent to some hoteliers for allocating rooms. Some rooms were for housing doctors and nurses and some for quarantine purpose,” said District Collector Naval Kishore Ram.
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He said that so far, they have paid over Rs 1 crore to hoteliers. Others would be paid soon. “We are paying rent as well as maintenance charges to hoteliers. Rent is being paid as per government rates while maintenance and other charges are being paid fully by us,” he added.
As for other private buildings, colleges or marriage halls, Ram said, “If PMC has signed any agreement with the private property owners, then it will act accordingly. But we are not supposed to pay them any rent as they were acquired under District Disaster Management Act till we need them,” he said.
Pune Municipal Commissioner Shekhar Gaikwad said they are using their own civic schools for quarantine purpose and, therefore, need not pay them. On college buildings and marriage halls, Gaikwad said they will not pay any rent. “Some of them asked for rent, we have returned their buildings,” he said.
PCMC commissioner Shravan Hardikar said they have cleared all bills of private buildings acquired so far. “We are not paying them rent but paying maintenance charges,” he said.
Congress leader Arvind Shinde, who owns a hotel in Pune railway station area, said he has not been paid a single paisa by the collectorate so far. “For three months, they did not pay me a single paisa… The room rent is Rs 2,200 per day. I have 50 rooms, I sent a bill for Rs 54 lakh. Now they say they will pay me as per government rates. I will suffer a big loss.”
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Shinde said even electricity, water and maintenance charges have not been paid. “I had to pay Rs 4 lakh towards these. I thought the collectorate will pay, but they haven’t so far,” he said, adding that like him other hoteliers have also not been paid anything.
Vivek Shinde, who runs the Maratha Mandir marriage hall near Chandni Chowk, said, “I lost nine bookings in three months. My charges are Rs 1.6 lakh per marriage. I lost this revenue as the collectorate acquired the hall. In all these three months, they have not even paid maintenance charges.”
Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.
Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives.
Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees.
During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa.
Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.
Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More
