Darj civic tax from tourist pockets Shell out Rs 10 a day from Sept 1

T T;Vivek chhetri;Darjeeling, Aug. 21: The Darjeeling municipality has decided to levy a Rs 10 tax a day on each tourist visiting the hill station from September 1. The charge will be levied as conservancy or sanitation tax, not tourism tax, and is expected to help the municipality which faces a cash crunch. Last year, tourists were told to pay a one-time entry fee of Rs 3. The earlier civic board had collected the “tourist tax” on November 15, 2011, by stopping vehicles entering the hill town at Ghoom. “I am personally not comfortable terming it a tourist tax. It sends a wrong message and we are thinking of calling it either conservancy or sanitation tax. We will collect the tax from September 1,” said Amar Singh Rai, the chairman of Darjeeling municipality. Tourists will have to pay the tax at the hotels with their bills. Rai said the civic body had discussed the matter with GTA chief executive Bimal Gurung and representatives of the hotel owners’ association a few days back. The civic authorities had to stop collecting the tax last November as it was difficult to distinguish between tourists and those coming to Darjeeling for work. That there was no system to stop the vehicles and collect the money also contributed to the confusion. Besides the entry fee of Rs 3, the municipality had also charged Rs 20 per multi-utility vehicle and car and Rs 50 from each bus. Its not clear if the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha-run present board will levy any tax on tourist vehicles. Darjeeling sees around 3.5 lakh domestic tourists and 40,000 foreigners annually. The visitors generally flock to the hills between March and May and later from October to November. On average, a tourist stays here for three days. (See chart) The municipality is expected to collect around Rs 1 crore annually from the tourists and it will be a relief for the cash-strapped civic body. “When I took charge of the municipality, the liability was about Rs 4 crore. We have managed to bring it down to Rs 2 crore in less than a year. Of the Rs 4 crore, almost Rs 2 crore was related to the rehabilitation work related to the devastation caused by Cyclone Aila,” said Rai. Even though all figures are not immediately available, the zamindari department collected taxes to the tune of Rs 10 lakh in March this year. The same department could collect only Rs 2 lakh in the entire financial year of 2010-11. The poor collection of tax is generally blamed on civic inefficiency. The civic body has to raise a portion of the employee’s salaries from its own resources. The total annual expenditure of the municipality in terms of salaries, wages for daily workers, gratuity for retired employees and a portion of their pension stood at Rs 1.02 crore. “It is difficult for us to manage. We have to pay 20 per cent of the salaries (the rest is paid by the state government) of the 456 permanent employees of the municipality. Also, we do not get any financial help to pay the 193 daily wage workers who get Rs 75 a day,” said a municipality official. Sources said the GTA had decided to allot Rs 1 crore to the Darjeeling municipality for repair of roads and pavements. There are a total of 95 roads, pavements and footpaths in Darjeeling.