Municipal councils must focus on increasing income: Tajul

Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperatives Minister Md Tajul Islam on Sunday said the municipal councils must focus on increasing income or face dissolution as the government plans to change the law to this end.

“City corporations and Paurashava follow their own laws. They must take responsibility for generating and increasing their revenue as per their laws. If they fail to pay the salary of their staff for 12 months, we are planning for their dissolution,” he said.

“This is not believable that the inhabitants of paurashava cannot pay tax,” Tajul said while addressing a National Policy Dialogue on ‘Strengthening the Urban Local Governments in Bangladesh’ at a city hotel here, a UNDP release said.

Livelihoods Improvement of Urban Poor Communities Project (LIUPCP) of the Local Government Division (LGD), Foreign Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) and UNDP Bangladesh jointly organised the dialogue in collaboration with Power and Participation Research Centre (PPRC) Bangladesh and IPE Global (India).

Chaired by PPRC Executive Chairman Dr Hossain Zillur Rahman, the dialogue was addressed, among others, by Senior Secretary of Local Government Division Helal Uddin Ahmed, British High Commissioner to BangladeshRobert Chatterton Dickson and UNDP Resident Representative Sudipto Mukerjee.