To improve revenue collection, accounting practices and look at ways it can widen its tax net, the Coimbatore Corporation has engaged Bengaluru-based Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy.
Corporation Commissioner Raja Gopal Sunkara said the first aspect that Janaagraha would be working on was improving revenue collection. One of the ways identified for doing so was to make the tax collection exercise as a competition among bill collectors.
This was a practice followed in a few urban local bodies in other States and perhaps in Chennai.
Janaagraha sources said by motivating bill collectors, equipping them with point of sale machines and even giving them uniforms, the Corporation would encourage to them to collect tax and reward the highest tax collectors.
For this the Corporation should also improve its data collection system and look at maintaining bill collector-wise data.
The second aspect was bettering the way the civic body maintained its accounting system. Mr. Sunkara said the civic body adopted a complicated system of maintaining its books, which needed to be improved within the rules the State Government prescribed. The supervising officers should be able to easily trace where how much money the civic body had spent, he said and added that Janaagraha would suggest ways for the improvement.
The third aspect that the non-government organisation would be working on was on the legal and political framework that civic bodies like the Coimbatore Corporation functioned. Though the Corporation would not be able to change the framework as it fell within the State Government’s prerogative, it would nevertheless share its observations and suggestions, the sources added.
