HMC to ramp up its revenue collection drive

Western Bureau:

The Hanover Municipal Corporation (HMC), which is seeking to add much-needed cash to its coffers, says it will be ramping up its revenue collection drive across the parish in the coming weeks, with special attention being given to the Lucea Transport Centre.

According to Lucea Mayor Sheridan Samuels, the ambitious revenue collection drive will start at the Lucea Transportation Centre, where several illegal additions have been done to shops, which were then rented to tenants, and for which the HMC is not getting any additional revenue.

“The illegal additions are in the form of extensions done to stalls that the HMC had given permission for construction, and the tenants have taken it upon themselves to extend,” said Samuels. “The extensions have taken up additional space, for which the tenants are not paying the additional rental.”

“Out of respect, we are going to give them (the tenants) written notices for them to remove those extensions, also giving time for them to be removed, and informing them of our intention to demolish the structures if they are not removed in the given timeframe,” said Samuels.

Samuels said all the necessary planning has been done and the HMC is now in a state of complete readiness to start the campaign.

“The programme will start as early as next week because, in the rental agreements signed by these tenants, it is clearly stated that, for any addition or any work to be done on the shops, permission must first be sought from the corporation, and what they have done is to ignore that clause completely.” He added that about 70 per cent of the tenants in the transportation centre are now in breach, because of illegal additions they have made to their shops. He said the unpaid addition represents a loss of potential revenue for the corporation.

“The tenants will either have to remove the additions to the shops or face a 100 per cent increase in their rent, as they will have to begin paying for the additional space that the extensions are now occupying,” stated Samuels.

Illegal billboards

In addition to going after the illegal stalls, Samuels said that, simultaneously, the overall drive will also extend to the illegal billboards that have been mounted across the parish.

“What we have found out is that persons have been coming to the corporation and paying for the installation of one or two billboards, and then, on making checks, we identify up to 20 billboards for the same event for which no payment was made,” said Samuels, who named Dream Weekend as one of the offenders.

“They (Dream Weekend) are the first ones that have been targeted, so we are going to get the billboards removed if the promoters do not come in to pay for the rest,” said Samuels. “They will be charged an additional fee for the fact that HMC officers had to go on the road to identify the additional billboards.”

According to Samuels, coming out of the corporation’s recent management retreat, a decision was taken that there will be a renewed effort at maximising the collection of all potential income due to the corporation going forward.