Beneficiaries of housing schemes owe Rs 100 crore to Vadodara civic body
VADODARA: The Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) has dues amounting to Rs 100 crore to be collected from beneficiaries of various housing schemes in the city, but finds itself in a tight spot when it comes to taking any action against the default.
The civic body issued notices to all such persons a couple of months back. While it has been claiming that it may take action against persons defaulting on payment of instalments for houses, the civic body seems to be overwhelmed by the large number of persons defaulting.
According to VMC officials, there are 17,600 beneficiaries who have not paid the instalments for their houses. The amount overdue from them totals Rs 100 crore now. VMC officials said that these dues are from around 39 residential schemes for the urban poor in the city.
A VMC official said that the civic body had issued notices to the beneficiaries in June and one on Tuesday too. “In the two months that passed, we were able to recover only Rs 70 lakh,” the official said.
According to the official, they have received multiple representations from beneficiaries where they claimed that they barely managed to make ends meet and would not be able to pay the due amount. “We cannot throw such a large number of people out of their houses. The number could be much higher if one considers that there were three to five people staying in one house. We will have to take a policy decision keeping this in mind,” he said.