Margao civic body fires sopo contractor

Margao: The Margao Municipal Council (MMC) has terminated the contract for

sopo

(market tax) contractor for having failed to pay several monthly installments of the collection to the municipality despite several reminders.

He had bagged the contract for sopo collection during 2018-19 for Rs 65 lakh.

Sources in the civic body said that while the contractor owed Rs 28 lakh, cheques he had issued to the municipality bounced owing to insufficient funds in his account.

The municipality has begun the process of recovering a part of the contractor’s dues through a Rs 17 lakh bank guarantee he had pledged. It had passed a resolution favouring termination of the contract at its meeting held recently, and has begun collecting sopo from vendors through a team of its employees. An eight-member team led by accounts and taxation officer Abhay Rane, and clerk Dilip Khanapurkar, has been constituted for the exercise, sources said.