Housing societies and buildings that came up after 2008 and their developers will now have to pay one-time fire service fees and annual fees, retrospectively since 2014, according to a recent circular issued by the Mumbai Fire Brigade. Officials said the total amount to be recovered is around Rs 1,400 crore, reports Chaitanya Marpakwar.
The circular, which was issued on June 7, says the fee recovery notices will be sent to the developer, owner, occupier or society within a month by the fire brigade’s regional command centres. The one-time fire service fees will be levied on the builder, and the annual charges on the housing society, owner or occupier.
The BMC has also drafted a new standard operating procedure for imposing fire service fees on all buildings that come up after June 2021.In May, BMC commissioner Iqbal Chahal had sanctioned the recovery of fire service fee, which is calculated at Rs 10 per sq m for all buildings. The annual charge is 1% per year of the fire service fee amount, said officials.
According to the fire brigade circular, fire service fees and annual fees are recovered under the Maharashtra Fire Prevention and Life Safety Measures Act, 2006. “It is necessary to recover the fees as per the provisions of the Act from March 3, 2014 for all buildings constructed on or after December 6, 2008,” the circular stated. “The deputy chief fire officer (CFO) concerned, with help of assistant divisional fire officers and divisional fire officers, will find out data of permissions granted to buildings from March 3, 2014, to May 14, 2015, where the BMC is the planning authority; and from March 3, 2014, to June 6, 2021, of buildings where Mhada, MMRDA, SRA or MbPT is the planning authorities. Data of buildings that came up between May 15, 2015, and June 6, 2021, will be made available by the chief engineer (development plan) for levy of fire service fees and annual fees,” it added.
These two fees were introduced to raise an internal fire protection fund for upgrade of services. “While 50% of the money collected under this head is to be given to the state government to strengthen fire services in other parts of the state, the remaining 50% is to be used by the BMC in Mumbai to create better fire safety and firefighting infrastructure like creating more fire stations. However, this money has not been recovered since 2014; it was stuck in red tape between the state government and the BMC,” claimed a senior civic official, adding that the BMC had exempted religious and a few charitable institutions, like old age homes, from payment of these fees.
BJP corporator Vinod Mishra claimed the “deliberate delay” in collection of the fees by fire brigade officials had caused a loss of thousands of crores to the BMC and state government. “If you calculate the interest on the principal amount of Rs 1,400 crore for seven years, the amount is much more. A probe must be conducted either by the anti-corruption bureau (ACB) or economic offences wing (EOW) against the officials concerned who did not charge the fees to favour builders in exchange for kickbacks. The responsibility for not recovering this money must be fixed,” Mishra said.
