Kochi Corporation to seek ‘offline’ nod

Kochi: As the e-governance programme has come to a total standstill, the city corporation has decided to approach the state government for issuing certificates like building permits and completion certificates manually to tide over the crisis temporarily.

Hundreds of applications for death, birth and marriage certificates, building permits and completion certificates are pending with the civic body for several months. During the council meeting on Monday, corporators from all political parties raised serious apprehensions over the failure of online delivery of civic services which resulted in chaos.

UDF councillor T. K. Ashraf said that an application for the death certificate was submitted nine months ago which has not been given yet. Councillors urged the mayor to take immediate measures to issue certificates manually.

Replying to the debate, Mayor Soumini Jain said that since the state government has prohibited manual delivery of certificates, special permission is required to overcome the crisis.

“Since several applications are pending, building permits and completion certificates have to be given to buildings with less than 60 square-metre areas for which government’s clearance is required,” she said.

CPM councillor Benedict Fernandez asked her whether the council can take a policy decision on giving offline building permits to buildings with an area of less than 3000 square feet.

CPM member V. P. Chandran demanded that the project should be handed over to Information Kerala Mission.

Deputy mayor T. J. Vinod admitted that the civic administration could not quantify works done by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the implementing firm of e-governance, due to technical incompetence.

Meeting with CPT on tax collection

Regarding the huge revenue loss due to non-assessment of buildings in Cochin Port Trust area and failure in tax collection, the mayor said that four special squads had been constituted to assess all buildings in the area.

“The assessment will be completed in 15 days and based on the report of the squads, a meeting will soon be convened with Port Trust authorities to discuss the clauses in the agreement signed between the two agencies,” said Ms Jain.

The council meeting also discussed signing an agreement with Kerala State Inland Navigation Corporation (KSINC) for RO-RO vessel service.

Illegal hoardings drain revenue

The city corporation has been sitting on the proposal to regularise the hundreds of unauthorised hoardings within the city limits for long, causing it huge revenue loss.

As per a report submitted by K. J. Antony, Opposition leader in the council, the corporation suffered loss to the tune of `50 crore due to illegal hoardings. “The issue was repeatedly brought up in the council. But there has been no response from the Mayor or the Finance Committee,” he said.

As per the report, the central zone has 557 hoardings of which 384 have permit. Only 179 of them are paying tax. In Vytilla, there are around 488 hoardings, of which 203 are unauthorised and only 198 paid tax. Eleven new applications have been submitted for permits.

At Palluruthy, all 9 are illegal hoardings as there is no documentation to prove that the permit has been given. In Fort Kochi, there are 8 illegal hoardings for which permission has not been granted. At Edapally, 63 out of the 286 hoardings are illegal and the tax has not been paid for 115 others.

The opposition leader also raised demand for conducting an inspection of hoardings across the city with the support of Kudumbashree Mission and Residents’ Associations to estimate the total revenue loss.

The councillors sought immediate measures to streamline illegal hoardings before the monsoon as many of them are put up in unsafe manner.

Meanwhile, Mayor Soumini Jain said a meeting will be convened with the advertisers to streamline hoardings. Deputy Mayor T. J. Vinod said that since the corporation has already passed an advertisement bylaw, action can be taken on its basis.