Bhubaneswar: Members of Swikruti, a transgender self-help group, have managed to collect nearly 7.5 lakh holding tax and trade licence fee from the defaulters in four days.
On February 7, Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) Commissioner Prem Chandra Chaudhary had handed over a list of big defaulters in the Smart City and asked them to recover around Rs 11 crore from them.
This team of 10 transgenders were trained in tax collection procedure with POS machines in the last three months.
As agreed by the BMC and SHG, the transgender group will get 1 per cent incentive if the collection is of 40 lakh and I.5 per cent if it goes up to 60 lakh. And if the collection is more than 60 lakh, the pay will be 2 per cent of the total amount.
This partnership between BMC and SHG has not only served the purpose of tax collection, but also helped in rehabilitation of the under-privileged transgender community by providing them with a respectful source of livelihood.
