Patiala MC facing acute financial crunch

PATIALA, Jan 14: The Patiala Municipal Corporation is facing an acute financial crunch and huge payments due to the employees and the contractors have gone in arrears, affecting the pace of development work in the city.The corporation which came into being on September 25, 1997, after the municipal committee was upgraded, has to pay Rs. 4.75 crore to the corporation employees on account of bonus and interim relief (additional dearness allowance). The corporation also has to clear the arrears of Rs. 85 lakh due to contractors for works executed by them but there are no funds to make the payments with. This has resulted in a piquant situation, where the contractors are not forthcoming to undertake works of the corporation. This has forced the corporation authorities to have the development works executed departmentally, as the corporation has already received a grant of Rs. 1.20 crore from the state government for development of slums.

Inquiries made by Newsline, here today, revealed that the house tax exemption announced by the state government had caused a dent in the earnings of the municipal corporation. Moreover, the octroi rates in case of the Patiala Municipal Corporation are currently the lowest in all the corporations of the state, as it is still charging the rates that were prevalent when it was a municipal committee. The Ludhiana Municipal Corporation has already got these octroi rates rationalised. The Patiala corporation has sent its case for approval of the state government, it is learnt.

Sources in the corporation disclosed that no fresh recruitments have been made since 1975. While at the moment there is an acute shortage of subordinate staff, the supervisory staff is in excess. For example, the corporation has three executive engineers, eight SDOs and five sectional officers (junior engineers).

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Sources add that while the corporation could make do with just four SDOs, it needed at least eight to ten sectional officers for proper execution of development works. Similarly, there is also an acute shortage of sanitation staff. Over the last two decades, no fresh appointments have been made while the city has grown manifold in size, putting the sanitation system under tremendous strain.

Shifting of the Indian Oil depots from Patiala to Sangrur and Bathinda has also caused a loss of revenue to the municipal corporation to the tune of Rs. 3.20 crore annually. In view of these financial constraints, the municipal corporation has turned its attention to other sources from where it could earn revenue. Harkesh Singh Sidhu, commissioner, Patiala Municipal Corporation, said that vigilance has been stepped up to check octroi evasion and this was likely to fetch additional revenue for the corporation. He said that octroi staff had been provided with walkie talkie sets and these were yielding good results in nabbing those trying to evade paying octroi.