HYDERABAD: The Comptroller and Auditor General of India has found serious lapses in the functioning of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation on various issues.
The CAG took up GHMC performance audit in four selected areas like building permissions and levy, collection of accounting of property tax, management of municipal solid waste and storm water drains and found serious lapses in their implementation.
The lapses include failure to implement building rules, enforcement of penal provisions for non/delay in payment of property tax, lack of data integration between the town planning wing (building permissions) and the revenue wing resulting in short assessment of property tax.
According to the report, the state government owes huge arrears of property tax on 1,384 government buildings which is to the tune of Rs 3,214 crore. Efforts for processing and safe disposal of waste was not effective. Establishment of waste-to-energy plants, which was envisaged as important source of disposal of MSW, had not materialised due to land issues. Two new processing and disposal units at Choutuppal and Lakdaram are yet to be established. Reclamation of existing dump sites was also not done.
“Though the draft master plan for strengthening storm water drainage system for the city prepared in 2011, it has not been implemented till date. The GHMC has failed to protect water bodies. There were 12,182 encroachments along nalas and water bodies, of which only 847 (7 pc) were evicted as of July 2017. About 17 lakes were not traceable while nine lakes were fully encroached.
The incidence of missing lakes showed non-protection of water bodies resulting in continuance of inundation during monsoons,” the report said. The GHMC failed to ensure compliance with regard to implementation of building rules by the government. This resulted in deviations from the approved plans and proliferation of unauthorised constructions during 2012-17. Deviations existed in 30,864 assessment (41 pc) out of 75,387 property tax assessments in test-checked circles. Of these, 10,460 were unauthorised constructions. Of the 9,896 court cases, 6,074 are still pending in various courts as of January 2018.
The CAG also found fault with the levy of building permit fee. Permissions were given to 42,425 buildings during 2012-17. Of those, audit was conducted for 894 building permissions. For 10 permitted buildings, environment impact fee was not levied which was to the tune of `20.04 crore, no betterment charges (`5.54 crore) were collected and charges were not collected for misuse of residential property for godowns, warehouse, factory and workplace (`5.62 crore).
The municipal corporation did not ensure strict compliance with regard to enforcement of penal provisions of no delay in payment of property tax.
Storm water drainage system not in place yet
The draft master plan for strengthening storm water drainage system for the city prepared in 2011 is yet to be implemented. There were 461 water-logging points in the city, of which 52 were critical and 67 were major traffic junctions. All these water-logging points were prone to risk of inundation during monsoon due to non-availability of connecting/aligning system to the nearby storm water drains.
To rectify the lapses, GHMC should ensure strict implementation of building rules and strengthen the town planning wing. It should put in place a mechanism to ensure realisation of property tax from every property, private or government, on regular basis without accumulation of arrears. There should be 100 pc segregation of MSW at source to ensure proper disposal. Efforts should be made to complete the pending infrastructure works at disposal points including intermediary transfer stations.
Failure Sheet
Though central govt departments were exempted from payment of property tax in lieu of services by GHMC, they are liable to pay service charges. As on March 2017, `23.82 crore was due from 65 government properties.
GHMC failed to protect water bodies. There were 12,182 encroachments along nalas and water bodies, of which only 847 (7%) were evicted as of July 2017.
About 17 lakes are not traceable while nine lakes are fully encroached. The incidence of missing lakes showed non-protection of water bodies resulting in continuance of inundation during monsoons.