Ranchi, Nov. 23: Just 12 flat owners have come forward to pay the municipality holding tax, in spite of the Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC) calling everyone to pay up.

The corporation has been issuing notices in newspapers for a month calling apartment owners to cough up the tax in an apparent bid to raise the much-needed revenue for the cash-starved body. So far, the tax was limited to independent house owners.

The RMC had announced that the flat owners should have their residences registered with the body before November 26. Ranchi currently has more than 10,000 flats.

Disheartened by their efforts, RMC officials now plan to carry out door to door registration. Six teams, each comprising a junior engineer, a zonal supervisor and an area tax collector, have been formed for the purpose.

RMC?s public relations officer Naresh Sinha said: ?This is truly depressing. We are not asking for some huge amount. Considering that almost all flat owners are educated, we certainly expected a better response. In fact, we had expected that a large number of people would turn up as the registration certificate would also be a document of ownership of the apartment.?

The annual tax would be a considerably smaller figure and would be calculated on the area of the flat, he informed. An estimated 40 per cent of registered households and establishments in the city pay holding taxes.

The corporation?s plea to builders to persuade flat owners to have their flats registered has, too, fallen on deaf years.

?In fact, just one builder has approached us with the names of the flat owners in the apartment he had constructed. Nobody understands (our problems),? said Sinha.

RMC being an autonomous body has to fund a major part of its activities on its own and hence this tax.

RMC administrator Ravi Shankar Verma said the corporation expects to raise a substantial amount through the new tax.

Because of the poor financial condition of the body, its employees had to approach the Jharkhand High Court for a salary hike and to make the compensation on a par with their counterparts in the state government.

RMC employees? salaries were fixed in 1992 and have not been changed since.

The corporation has 1,300 employees and its total expenditure on salaries is Rs 48 lakh per month.

RMC used to receive Rs 2 crore annually through stamp duties. But, to add to its cash crunch, this source of funds was stopped through a government order last year. The autonomous body?s annual establishment cost is Rs 9 crore and it generated Rs 7.71 crore through its resources last year.

The purse strings are so tight that the corporation could not pay a private party for maintenance of streetlights. Instead, RMC had asked the party to raise the amount by installing promotional hoarding on the light poles.