VIJAYAWADA: Guntur municipal corporation (GMC) is planning to switch to the Bengaluru model to maintain vacant land parcels in the city, and may levy fines on landowners if they allow their sites to become garbage dumps. The civic body has identified about 20,000 vacant and unkempt sites in the city which have become mosquito breeding centres due to improper maintenance.
It is learnt to be readying a report for submission to the govt to seek permission to levy penalties on the owners of those plots.
While civic authorities have been issuing notices to owners of vacant house sites in the city, the owners are not responding to the notices. Many residential areas are suffering due to the unhygienic conditions in the neighbourhood.
As per existing rules, vacant landowners need to pay vacant land tax (VLT) at the time of filing application for building construction. As many people purchase land on investment purpose, they do not take up any construction activity, which has become a public health issue for the authorities.
Guntur West legislator Galla Madhavi asked GMC authorities to first focus on open sites owned by the civic body and keep them clean before issuing notices to private people. She said hundreds of sites owned by the civic body are lying neglected and have become garbage dumps.
GMC commissioner Puli Srinivasulu, while asking the public health department to ready a blueprint to handle the issue, referred to the Bengaluru model where the civic body takes up the cleaning of private sites and collect the charges from landowners.
