Nagpur: Abhijit Bangar, who took over as the new municipal commissioner on Wednesday, said his top priority for the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) would be to improve its financial condition by tapping new sources of revenue along with boosting the income.
Bangar admitted to NMC’s critical financial condition. He was quick to point out that the revised Goods and Services Tax (GST) grant will take care of NMC’s Rs 90 crore committed expenditure. Till October, the NMC got Rs 52.57 crore as monthly GST grant. However, the NMC will have to take care of capital liability in terms of city’s development work, he said.
“Local government bodies should be self-sufficient and must fulfil needs of the administration as well as the people through their revenue. Help from the central and state governments should be taken for new development-oriented investment,” Bangar said.
According to him, the NMC’s dependency on government grant has increased manifold. Now, his focus will be to improve its own revenue generation like cent per cent property tax collection and tapping new resources of revenue in consultation from elected representatives.
However, the immediate priority for him was to gear up for water scarcity looming large over the city. He said the NMC will prepare a short-term plan so that citizens don’t have to suffer from water scarcity in the coming days.
The new civic chief said he will also focus on sanitation and cleanliness. He admitted that the Swachh Bharat ranking was affected due to NMC’s poor complaint redressal system. “My focus will be to address each and every genuine complaint of citizens pertaining to sanitation and cleanliness,” he said.
Bangar added that he will take this opportunity to work in chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and Union transport minister Nitin Gadkari’s hometown.
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