NEW DELHI: Facing criticism from traders for not implementing its decision to roll back the 17 times hike in trade and factory licence/renewal fees despite making public announcements, North Delhi Municipal Corporation will finally bring a proposal in the House for approval on Thursday.
The civic body will also hold camps in each ward, possibly by the end of next week, for collecting pending licensing fees at reduced rates, said standing committee chairman Jogi Ram Jain. He added that there was some confusion over the approvals required for the implementation of this proposal but everything has now been sorted out.
“We made the announcement in August and later got the proposal approved in the standing committee meeting. But still there was no development. To get clarity on the issue, I spoke to the additional commissioner, North DMC. We have sorted out everything and the proposal will be brought in the House meeting. We have no intention to create difficulty for traders and the very purpose of this proposal to roll back the fees was to give relief to the traders who have suffered major losses in the pandemic,” he said.
Earlier, despite making an announcement at a joint meeting by the deliberative wing, the civic body failed to enforce the rollback rates leading to protests from traders. Some of them even complained that the staff were pressuring them to pay the fees at the hiked rates to avoid a penalty as the rollback will take time in implementation.
“I request traders to wait for a week and things will be streamlined soon,” said Jain.
As soon as the increased rates were imposed early this year, traders had expressed resentment and demanded immediate roll back. “It is really surprising that despite making the announcement, decisions were not enforced on ground,” said Nitin Gupta, president of Kamla Nagar Traders’ Association.
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