CMC area property owners heave a sigh of relief

BANGALORE: This should come as a relief to property owners in the City Municipal Council (CMC) areas: the government will come out with new, scaled down rates for drainage and water supply, for owners of sites measuring 20 X 30 ft and 30 X 40 ft.
The government had notified a one-time user contribution fee of Rs 10,000 for Cauvery drinking water supply scheme and laying of underground drainage facilities for all domestic users, on sites measuring up to 40 X 60 ft.It will issue an order next week, revising the fee and fixing it at Rs 3,000-7,000 for the new proposed categories — sites measuring 20 X 30 ft and 30 X 40 ft.
The government, which has entrusted the work of executing the Rs 658-crore project of supplying drinking water and fixing sanitary connections to the seven CMCs and one TMC around the city to BWSSB, has also directed the Board to collect the user contribution fees. As against the Rs 120 crore targeted from the citizens, so far only Rs 25 crore has been collected.
Director of the municipal administration directorate Nilaya Mitash told The Times of India that during the "willingness to pay" survey conducted by the government, CMC residents had pointed out at the uniform slab structure and requested for relief.
"Right now, for all sital dimensions irrespective of size up to 40 X 60 ft, a uniform fee of Rs 10,000 has been fixed which people feel is not fair. So we have recommended to the government to notify two more slabs so that people with lesser sital area will get some relief," Mitash explained.
According to BWSSB chairman S.K. Pattanayak, once the government comes up with new rates, the excess fee paid by citizens so far would be remitted. Earlier, the government had set July-end as the deadline for people to pay up the user contribution fee, failing which a fine of Rs 5,000 was to be levied.
However, due to this lacuna, people had not volunteered to pay up.
The user contribution fee includes road cutting charges of Rs 1,500 for residential properties and Rs 3,000 for commercial properties.
This excludes access and connection changes to be levied by the BWSSB as per its existing connection charges.