The solid waste management department of the city civic body received the highest allocation in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation’s 2022-23 budget presented on Wednesday.
The water supply and roads departments rank second and third, respectively, on the allocation list.
The funds will be mostly spent on daily operations of the departments as no new projects can be launched with the allocations, KMC officials said.
New projects will be launched with funds allocated by the state government, the officials said.
A senior official of the KMC said funds meant for capacity augmentation of water treatment plants or construction of more plants come separately from the state government and are not reflected in the KMC’s budget.
Mayor Firhad Hakim presented a Rs 4,410 crore budget with a Rs 177 crore deficit.
In his budget speech, Hakim spoke about launching waste segregation at source for all 144 wards in the city.
Later, speaking to newspersons, Hakim said the civic body would enter into an agreement with a company to build mastic asphalt roads in many parts of Kolkata so the roads remained durable for at least a decade.
The budget document showed that the solid waste management department was allocated Rs 667 crore for the current fiscal. The revised estimate for the department in 2021-22 was Rs 624 crore.
The allocation for the water supply department for 2022-23 is Rs 415 crore. The revised estimate for 2021-22 showed that the department was allocated Rs 382 crore.
The roads department has been allocated Rs 340 crore for 2022-23. In 2021-22, the department was allocated Rs 290 crore (revised estimate).
Advertisement policy
After presenting the budget, Hakim announced that the KMC had decided to not allow flex banners in the city for advertisement. All hoardings have to be made of canvas or LED.
“We will allow only LED hoardings and ones made of canvas. We will soon announce an advertisement policy for the city. The policy will mention how many hoardings can be put up on a road and specify the nature of the hoardings,” he said.
The mayor also said that the proposed policy would specify that the houses that would install hoardings on their terraces would have to pay tax according to the rate applicable to commercial establishments.
“Many houses have installed iron frames without even taking permission from the KMC. We will start treating houses with frames for advertisement as commercial establishments,” he said.
