‘DMCs charging illegal recovery fees from citizens’

Karachi
The administrator of Karachi Metropolitan Corporation, Sajjad Hussain Abbasi, has taken serious notice of the recovery fee to the tune of billions of rupees being charged by the District Municipal Corporations (DMCs) without any authority.
Talking to The News, KMC metropolitan commissioner Samiuddin Siddiqui said the devolution of DMCs from the chief municipal body was yet to be notified. However, the DMCs had been charging fees from citizens for under the heads of road cutting, rent of petrol dispensers, hawkers’ fee, building material charges, parking and beautification, street animal charges, road obstruction, cable operators’ fees and others.
The metropolitan commissioner said the DMCs were charging the fees without any legal authority, incurring losses of billions of rupees to the KMC which is actually supposed to be receiving these funds.
He said the most amount recovered was under the head of road cutting.
He said under the law, the taxes and fees to be levied and recovered by the KMC and DMC were clearly listed, and the district councils were overstepping their jurisdictions. He said the DMCs should return all the funds to citizens and other stakeholders.
The metropolitan commissioner said instructions had been issued to the staff of DMCs concerned to desist from interfering in recovery of fees by the KMC’s land and anti-encroachment department.
Meanwhile, on one hand the devolution of DMC has been suspended due to issues with the recovery of local taxes as on the other the administrators of district councils refuse to accept the transfer.
The KMC’s financial adviser Afaq Saeed said the DMCs have been instructed not to charge the illegal recovery fees.
He said the metropolitan system of the city has undergone so many changes that it also creates confusion in its own system. “There have been many changes in the KMC. It became the City District Government of Karachi and then reverted back to being KMC and now district councils were devolved. So a lot of confusions and ambiguities have emerged in the systems,” he said.
The KMC in a recent statement had stated that it will issue a notification for the devolution of six DMCs in Karachi on August 25. The DMCs are of Korangi, Malir, East, West, Central and South.