KMC claims server crash, angers property owners

Kakinada: Property owners and residents in Kakinada are facing difficulties in getting tax fixation for their properties, applying for regularisation of their constructions, under Building Penalty Scheme and others. The functioning of Kakinada Municipal Corporation has been badly affected as the servers and computers were not working properly since the past eight months.

The KMC had taken up a special drive for collecting taxes in March and is now campaigning by spending lakhs of rupees for its publicity. The property owners are making several rounds to the KMC office to get their building plan approvals and to get tax amount for their constructions fixed.

According to sources, many builders and property owners have been appealing to the KMC officials to fix tax for their constructions. But, the officials were not able to do it on the pretext of non-functioning servers and computers in the Corporation. For example, some of the constructions were made without getting proper approval from the City Planning Office. But, due to lack of knowledge or cheating by the builders or other reasons, the constructions were completed without getting approvals. In such cases, the KMC will levy two times penalty and then fix the taxable amount.

Meanwhile, the government has introduced BPS for regularisation of such constructions. If a property owner wants to apply for BPS, he or she should pay the tax.

Citizens’ Initiative secretary Duvvuri Subrahmanyam said that the KMC has drastically failed in providing facilities to the people and it has not set things right. He alleged that due to lack of knowledge and ignorance of KMC Commissioner, the people were facing such problems.

He also demanded KMC Mayor S. Pavani to get a hold on the administration to rectify things.

He alleged that the KMC officials could not give proper services on the pretext of server problems, election duties, special drives for tax collection and others activities.

Meanwhile, the KMC officials said that the problem was brought to the notice to the government and funds would be released for it and the problem would be sorted out soon.

The BPS may be extended for three more months.