COIMBATORE: The City Corporation Council on Monday approved the collection of service charges and a deposit for connections to the civic body’s underground drainage service. It also endorsed the doubling of charges for underground sewage connection for residential houses, non-residential buildings and commercial establishments.
The lowest service charge of Rs 250 per year and Rs 3,000 as deposit are for those paying property tax up to Rs 500.
The highest charges in the residential category are for those paying over Rs 50,000 as property tax. They will have to pay Rs 50,000 as the service charge per year and Rs 1 lakh as deposit for the underground connection.
The deposit for non-residential buildings will be Rs 25,000 higher than that for residential houses. This includes marriage halls, hotels and educational institutions.
When Mayor P Rajkumar started reading the resolution, opposition councillors criticised the increase, saying that the public would suffer because of it.
“The increase in charges for a connection by up to 75 percent is unacceptable. The Corporation should withdraw the steep hike and lower it to 25 percent,” said Ward 42 councillor V Ramamurthy.
“The general public will not take the Corporation’s sewage connection if it charges such high amounts. They will engage private sewage lorries to take away their sewage once in five or six months. The cost of engaging a sewage lorry for one trip would be much lower than the increased charges,” said MDMK councillor K Rajendren, who represents Ward 58.
However, defending the increase, Mayor P Rajkumar said the present Corporation set-up was forced to fix these high charges for the underground sewage connections because of the agreement signed by the previous DMK set-up in 2007.
The Mayor also said that they had postponed the hike proposal so far and they are implementing it now as there is no other option.
“Initially, the Union government had asked us to collect Rs 200 every month from a building owner. We were able to lower it to Rs 250 for a year. We have fixed the new charges in such a way that the government will not incur a loss, nor will it pose a burden to the public,” said Corporation Commissioner K Vijayakarthikeyan.
“If this is not implemented, Corporation won’t get grants from the Union government,” the Commissioner added.