At a time when the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) is facing revenue deficit, the civic body’s treasury witnessed an influx of over Rs 53 lakh from e-auction of a considerable volume of scrap materials lying in the condemned store yard.
The civic body has been reeling under revenue deficit. For the year 2023-24, it presented a Rs 146 crore deficit budget. Although the civic body has been able to close the deficit gap compared to its previous financial years, it is desperately trying to explore every option for filling its coffers.
The scrap materials were kept segregated in four different lots under categories: ferrous scrap, unserviceable non-ferrous scrap and miscellaneous scrap, battery scrap and electrical scrap. For fixation of reserve price for the first three categories, current market rates were taken into consideration and which were provided by MSTC, the e-commerce company under the Government of India. The four lots were sold in the e-auction and the net sale value amounting to Rs 53,72,714 was deposited to KMC treasury.
An official remarked that not only did this bring a considerable amount of revenue to the KMC coffers but also helped ward off vector-borne diseases. “These scrap materials were of considerable volume and had they not been disposed off in the right time, it would have drawn mosquitoes during monsoon,” he said.
KMC sources said that recent efforts to bring in revenues have been a mixture of success and failure. “The decision to hike parking fees was one such. It, however, had to be withdrawn following instructions by the chief minister since it was perceived as a burden on the taxpayers,” the source said.
Recently, while inaugurating a material recycling plant in New Town that will recycle construction and demolition waste materials into raw materials for new products, the mayor of KMC, Firhad Hakim said that in the near future it will earn revenues for the civic body. He said the plant will help create raw materials which can be used to pave the roads. At Dhapa, a 2 TPD plastic waste processing plant was installed and the end products are benches, chairs, doors etc. KMC is thus eyeing recycling of waste as another way of increasing revenues.