25-04-2025
EG lags behind in water cess collection target
Rajamahendravaram: East Godavari district collector P Prasanthi expressed concern over the sluggish pace in the collection of water cess and stressed the need for close personal monitoring by officials. She instructed that tax collection must align with the set targets.
Collector Prasanthi conducted a review meeting with field-level revenue officials on Thursday.
During the meeting, she instructed the officials to publish mandal-wise details of Water Users Associations (WUAs) to ensure transparency and better coordination.
She informed that the district has a total cultivable area of 2,80,000 acres, for which water cess amounting to Rs 2,84,51,378 needs to be collected. However, only Rs 2, 00, 11, 361 (42.16%) of the target has been collected so far.
Rajamahendravaram division achieved 40.57% of its target, while the Kovvur division managed 43.75%. The collector said that as per government guidelines, full recovery of the pending taxes must be ensured by the end of January.
She also directed that if there are discrepancies in the extent of cultivated land under ayacut areas, joint field-level verification should be conducted by the Revenue, Irrigation, and Agriculture departments.
She stated that the collection of water cess is being closely monitored at the level of the Special Chief Secretary to the State Government, highlighting the seriousness of the collector also directed officials to resolve petitions received through the public grievance redressal platform promptly and efficiently, ensuring that citizen concerns are addressed without delay.
Joint collector S Chinna Ramudu, District Revenue Officer T Seetha Ramamurthy, RDOs R Krishna Naik and Rani Sushmita, Housing PD S Bhaskar Reddy, District Survey Officer B Lakshminarayana, Collectorate AO Ali, and Tahsildars from 19 mandals attended the meeting.
