Ludhiana, July 20
The Municipal Corporation is toying with an innovative idea of issuing a single bank passbook for all payments by the city residents towards civic charges and all other local taxes and levies, made to the MC. The top brass of the civic body have had several preliminary meetings with senior officials of the commercial banks in this connection.
Once the plan takes shape, the city population will stand to benefit in more ways than one. First and foremost, the scheme would provide for all payments of civic charges like house tax, water and sewerage charges, licence fee, tehbazari fee, building application fee and composition fee through notified branches of a commercial bank in the city.
Giving outline of the scheme to Ludhiana Tribune, the MC Commissioner, Mr S.K. Sharma, said the relevant entries of payment in the passbook issued to the residents and other assessees as well as multiple maintenance of computerised record both with the bank and the MC, would cut down to a great extent the common complaint of non-posting of payments in the demand register which in turn leads to the inclusion of paid bills as arrears in subsequent bills.
With the relevant entries made in the passbook, showing payment of civic charges and other local taxes, right at the time of payment in the designated bank, the residents would not need to preserve receipts for years together to be shown just in case the demand for arrears was raised at any time in future. Moreover, with the facility of making payments through different branches of the bank, the people would also get rid of the inconvenience of standing in long queues at the zonal or main office of the civic body while the employees of the branches concerned could utilise the time saved from the onerous task of cash receipt to proper maintenance of records and streamline other public dealing services.
According to Mr Sharma, every effort will be made to make the bank passbook a comprehensive document for the individual assessees for every conceivable payment or charges paid to the MC so that the people could have a permanent record and proof of payment in their own possession at all times. He said during the discussions held so far with officials of several banks, the scheme had evoked an encouraging response.
Further, with the proof of all up to date payments towards civic charges and other local taxes, available with the residents themselves in the shape of the pass-book, the cumbersome procedure of obtaining clearance certificate from different departments of the MC in the event of seeking a ‘No objection Certificate’ or certain other permissions, could also be done away with.
The MC Commissioner informed that once the formal agreement was signed with one of the commercial banks, necessary work for the development of computer hardware, software and networking would be taken in hand so that the plan could be given effect as soon as possible.
