Gudiyattam Gudiyattam Town - Municipal

Chapter ñ 9 Final Report: Gudiyattam Municipality
Water Charges 46.19% 20.75%
Other Fees 70.54% 18.47%
The collection efficiency under all the heads of income is between poor to average
and needs to be improved.
Implement door-to-door collection mechanism, whereby property tax and water
charges are collected from every household by the municipality staff. A
separate collection team to be formed for this purpose, which will visit all the
households and collect tax. A mobile collection van has been provided for this
purpose in the FOP, which will help the staff in collection mechanism.
Launch a focused drive on existing arrears.
Conduct one time settlement scheme for old arrears and incentivise payments
through marginal rebates for arrears > 5 years.
Implement payment due date along with a 90 day grace period during which
payments would involve a nominal interest payment.
Payments beyond the grace period should include a steep penal charge to
encourage payments on time.
Work with GoTN to moot creation of a special tribunal for speedy disposal of
properties under litigation.
In case of disputed property tax, the assessee should first pay the tax under
protest as in the case of excise or customs and then take necessary legal course.
The Act should be modified in such a way that no legal recourse should be
available to the assessee without paying the tax under protest.
The billing mechanism, accounts and DCB Register should be fully computerized.
This will help the Municipality in providing ready information on defaults and help
in speedy recovery process.
With regard to improvement in collection efficiency of water charges, the
Municipality should first improve the service levels. The Municipality should
conduct a survey on the present service levels and identify places where service
levels are good. The Municipality should then do a focused drive on these blocks
with good service levels and implement various collection measures given
above.
The Municipality may also consider implementation of late payment fines and in
case of extreme overdue situations, disconnecting supply.
As regards blocks with low service levels, the Municipality should improve the
service levels and effect various measures to improve the service levels. Only
with improvement in service levels, the collection efficiencies can be improved.
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