PUNE: The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has urged the food and drug administration (FDA) to make water tax NOCs compulsory for issuing and renewing food licences.
The PMC’s water department has written a letter to the FDI, saying that the powers to allot NOCs should be given to the civic body as it would help in recovering pending water tax dues from food joints. “Earlier, the powers of issuing food licences to eateries were with the PMC.
The civic administration had made it mandatory for the food joints to provide ‘no tax dues certificates’ from the water department before allotting or renewing permits. But since the FDA allots the licence, no NOC of the PMC’s water department is sought. This is leading to a pendency in water tax dues,” said Aniruddha Pawaskar, head of the PMC’s water supply department.
The letter said that the the civic administration is facing loss of revenue as the eateries are not paying water tax. If the powers of the NOCs are given to the PMC, it will be able to speed up recovery, the letter said.
Ganesh Shetty, president, Pune Restaurants and Hoteliers’ Association, said, “The NOCs may create undue hurdles in allotment of permits. The civic administration has other means of recovering tax. They can snap connections to recover the dues. Increasing the number of NOCs is against the basic idea of ease of doing business,” he said.
