The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) health department has suggested the civic body’s solid waste management department to conduct a special cleanliness drive on such premises and forward the bill to the assessment department so that the amount can be added to the owner’s property tax bill.
In case the owner can’t be traced, the KMC assessment department will create a new assessee number and add the cleanliness bill. Most of the these plots are in KMC’s added areas.
A KMC health department official said there are around 5,000 vacant plots across the city, mostly in the civic body’s added areas, like Behala, Tollygunge to Jadavpur, Garia and places off EM Bypass.
Officials claimed that cleaning up these vacant plots had been an uphill task for the civic body as the owners either could not be traced or had refused to clean the premises, turning them into mosquito breeding ground.
“We have failed to trace owners in several neighbourhoods along the EM Bypass, including Purbachal, Kasba, Madurdaha, Mukundapur, Survey Park, Patuli, Garfa among other areas. Similarly, many vacant plots that fall in the Tollygunge-Jadavpur belt have remained out of bounds for our special vector-control squad because of mounds of accumulated garbage. We have taken up the matter with the owners and asked them to fix a schedule without delay.
If they fail to complete the cleaning work in time, we will ask the solid waste management department to conduct a special drive but ask the owners to pay for such a cleaning operation,” said a KMC health department official.
The KMC solid waste management department has identified vacant plots in dengue-prone areas, where the clean-up drive will be conducted.
