VIJAYAWADA: The city is ahead of several major cities in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka in terms of mobilising and spending funds under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) but lagging behind in maintaining sanitation, according to Mayor Mallika Begum.

After completing a nine-day study tour of nine cities and towns in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala with a delegation of 22 corporators from the city, Ms. Begum said at a press conference on Monday that water was being metered in all houses, including thatched ones in Kerala and people there were paying the charges without any complaint. She found sanitation in Kerala excellent, as basket collection system was being followed for many years.

The Mayor described Alandur municipality in Tamil Nadu as a role model to all local bodies, as the residents there were contributing to welfare programmes like the laying of roads and construction of drainages. The corporators visited Chennai, Alandur, Coimbatore, Ooty and Madurai in Tamil Nadu, Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi in Kerala and Bangalore and Mysore in Karnataka.

Ms. Begum said the collective opinion of the team was that Vijayawada was far ahead of all these cities and towns in terms of property tax collection from houses. "We were surprised that their tax collection rate is only 60 per cent. We proudly told them that we are collecting 98 per cent of our taxes," Ms. Begum said.

Computerisation of household data by the local bodies in Kerala was another issue that caught the attention of the corporators so much that Ms. Begum called Municipal Commissioner Natarajan Gulzar from Thiruvananthapuram to ask him to explore the possibility of implementing the same in Vijayawada. "Mr. Gulzar told me that the process has already started in the city. Once the computerisation of the household data is over, it is very easy to issue birth and death certificates and other documents," she said.

The corporators did not find litterbins on the sides of roads in any of the places they visited, as basket collection system was being implemented every where. Ms. Begum denied reports that appeared in a section of the media here that differences cropped up among the corporators, particularly between her and her deputy Anne Prasanna in the midst of the tour.

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