East Delhi Municipal Corporation rolls out sop opera on low balance

NEW DELHI: The BJP-led

East Delhi Municipal Corporation

on Monday presented its budget. Apart from huge

tax rebates

and other sops, sanitation, education and health got top billing.

Some of the proposals were quite radical for a corporation struggling with its finances and even finding it difficult to pay salaries to its employees. For instance, the budget proposed to completely waive tax on properties up to 41.81 square metres, and significantly reduce conversion charges.

“We have tried to make optimal use of scarce financial resources to provide the best possible civic services,” said Jitendra Chaudhary, chairman of standing committee.

A Congress councillor, however, said the move would bleed the cash-strapped corporation white. Already, a large number of sanitation workers have been on strike for the last 20 days as they haven’t been paid for the last three months.

The number crunching

The budget has a revised income estimate of Rs 3,478 crore for 2016-17 and Rs 3,866 crore for 2017-18. It has also revised its expenditure estimate to Rs 3535.59 crore for 2016-17 and Rs 3,841.37 for 2017-18 fiscal.

The proposals are spread over several heads.

Infrastructure & health

The budget promised to regularise illegal constructions up to February 8, 2007 in urban areas, and up to June 1, 2014, in rural areas by taking compounded fees according to the building bylaws. In fact, the corporation went a step further and promised to waive off the requirement of a building sanction for developing properties on areas between 106 sq m and 500 sq m. Developers can get a plan passed by an architect and just inform the corporation.

The corporation would provide health check-up kits in primary health centres and polyclinics for diagnosis of heart-related diseases.

The civic body also plans to crack down on unused/abandoned cars encroaching open space. A crane for each zone would be procured for this. Also, garbage from the Ghazipur landfill site would be used to NH-24 expansion work.

Education

For students’ safety,

CCTV

cameras have been promised at 15 primary schools this year, with the scope of extending these to all primary schools. Science clubs have also been proposed in municipal schools, where yoga teachers would be recruited. Apart from that, the life insurance cover of students have been bumped up to Rs 1,00,000 from Rs 50,000.

The corporation also plans to start evening classes for illiterate parents of primary school students in the same schools as their wards. “In a recent survey, we found around 30% parents are illiterate. Most of them agreed to attend classes in the evening after work, and retired teachers will teach them for free,” Chaudhary told TOI.
Sanitation

A name change could change things for safai karamcharis, believes the corporation. So it has decided to brand them as ‘paryavaran sahayaks’ (environment assistants) to give them more respect.

It has also promised one toilet block exclusively for women and the differently abled in each ward and mobile toilets. The corporation also plans to place 640 big and 6,400 small garbage bins.

Digital India

The civic body would also issue general trade and factory trade licences online. It would also enable credit card/debit card transactions at its offices from April.

The million rupee question now is this: where is all that money going to come from?