CHENNAI: The committee formed for fixing uniform building licence fee in urban civic bodies across the state is pushing for a revision of the contribution to Manual Workers General Welfare Fund (MWGWF), from 1 per cent to 0.5 per cent of total estimated cost of construction.
Official sources told Express that the committee members in a recent meeting observed that the MWGWF contribution, which is fixed by the government, was increased from 0.3 per cent to 1 per cent of total estimate of construction. This rate is higher than that of the building fee. “Since construction costs are increasing every year, the contribution to MWGWF will also be increasing proportionally and hence the contribution should be revised,” observed the committee members.
Incidently, the real estate sector has also been pushing for trimming the MWGWF. Usually, for getting approvals, a builder or developer has to pay building license fee, development charges, plan charges, regularisation charges, land cost and road cut charges. The builder also has to pay road cut charges for water and power connections, scrutiny fee, security deposit for display board and the Workers Welfare Board. Builders Association of India State treasurer S Ramaprabhu said, “If one takes into account all these charges, the MWGWF accounts for nearly 30 per cent of the total fee.
We are opposing it. We want it not to be uniform but categorised for Tier-1, Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities.”
The committee had worked out a fee structure for urban local bodies after dividing the corporations, except the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) area and Avadi corporation, into two categories. The corporations formed prior to 2010 come under first grade.
These include Madurai, Coimbatore, Salem, Tirunelveli, Tiruchirapalli, Vellore, Erode, Tirupur and Thoothukudi. Corporations formed after 2010 come under the second category. These include Thanjavur, Dindigul, Hosur and Nagercoil corporations. The uniform building fee will be separate for category one corporations and category two corporations. Similarly, it would be different for selection-grade and first-grade municipalities.