BHOPAL: Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC) is dependent on sanitation workers for accessing record of number of families and shops inside buildings for collection of sanitation tax. BMC had decided to collect sanitation tax from every family, including tenets in a building instead of single tax for sanitation from a building. This initiative has been challenged by former corporators who say the new tax will be a burden on people facing financial constraints due to Corona pandemic.
Besides, deploying sanitation workers for the purpose of collecting data in every building will lead to collection of inaccurate data, which will be based on building owner’s declaration and there is no mechanism available to identify authenticity. The BMC has now 380 such families that have declared number of tenets in their buildings. These families will have to pay individually the new tax, but those who have not made any declaration will automatically be exempted.
So far, BMC has failed to carry out any genuine survey of number of families or commercial establishments in the state capital. Former leader of opposition in the BMC council Mohammad Sageer said he will challenge the new tax, which will be a burden on people.
‘Sanitation workers know well’
Municipal assistant commissioner Sandhya Chaturvedi said anitation workers know how many families live inside a building as they go for waste collection every day and they will easily access the data on number of families or shops inside a building.
