The City Municipal Council has resolved to hand over the collection of water tax to a private company. The tender process in this regard will be started soon. If everything goes well, the private company will collect the water tax from April.

The city has a population of 32,000. Water tax dues are more though the civic body has been convincing people to pay the tax on time. Hence, the City Municipal Council has taken the decision to hand over the responsibility of the collection of water tax to a private company.

This year, the expected tax turnout was Rs 60 to 65 lakh. But, only Rs 30 lakh tax have been collected so far. This has reduced the income of the City Municipal Council, an official said and added that it has affected the implementation of development works in the city.

Council Commissioner B B Pushpavathi said there is no chance of misappropriation of the money collected by the private company. When the bill collector gives the bills and collects the tax, the data is sent by the billing machine and is fed to the computer in the civic body, online.

Only the collection of water tax will be handed over to the private company and it has been approved at the Council meeting. The property tax and commercial taxes will be collected at CMC office itself, she clarified.

She said that an estimated Rs 1.50 crore has to be collected as property tax and about Rs 85 lakh commercial tax is expected to be collected. Pushpavathi said that a programme will be held to create awareness on the payment of taxes, within the due date.