Bhubaneswar, Jan. 9: The civic body has decided to introduce an online collection system for parking fees, hoarding licence and vending zones fees to make the revenue management system simpler.
The initiative will be taken up under the state government's e-governance project. Gurgaon-based IL&FS Environment Infrastructure and Services Limited will execute the job on behalf of the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation and introduce the same to the public.
The system will facilitate various parking lot operators, vendors and advertisers to pay their respective municipal fees with a few clicks of the mouse. "The move aims to streamline and make the revenue management system easier. A good revenue collection will help us provide more quality services to the citizens," said mayor Ananta Narayan Jena.
The civic body has already introduced an online holding tax collection system for three wards, which will be expanded to the remaining 64 wards in the next phase. "The online holding tax collection was introduced in a few wards on pilot basis. We are going to expand the service to all the wards shortly," said the mayor.
The corporation now collects around Rs 14 lakh from advertisements on hoardings, Rs 2 lakh in rent from the market and Rs 11 lakh as parking fees on an average every month. "The manual collection process was tardy for us as well as for the citizens. The new online system will definitely prove to be a time and energy saver for all," said a civic body official.
In order to use the online payment service, users will have to visit www.odishaonline.gov.in and click on current services. New users will have to register themselves by providing required information, following which they will get an ID and password. The user will then be able to make the payment by logging into the domain.
Besides holding tax, the civic body has some other online services for birth and death certificates, kalyan mandap booking and water tax collection.
"People are speedily moving towards a cashless society and this move makes perfect sense," said Saheed Nagar resident Mahir Hanif.
A housing and urban development department official told The Telegraph that a review meeting was scheduled with different stakeholders for introduction of the new online services under the e-governance project tomorrow. "The executor and bank partners have been called to decide on different modalities of the project," he said.
