The Thiruvananthapuram city Corporation has posted record Plan expenditure at over 90% in the 2021-22 financial year. As per official figures, the civic body has recorded 93.39% expenditure of Plan funds. In the previous year, the Corporation had recorded an expenditure of 74%. Among municipal Corporations, Thiruvananthapuram stands second behind Kollam, which has recorded 97.63% expenditure.
The city Corporation has spent ₹202.38 crore out of the total of ₹216.71 crore allocated in the Plan in the previous financial year. The civic body's total allocation is more than double that of the allocation for most Corporations.
In fact, most urban bodies have performed better than in previous years. The Thiruvananthapuram Corporation also improved its overall tax collection with a total of ₹88-crore collected in 2021-22, with the data of the last three days of the financial year to be synchronised. In the previous year, the figure stood at ₹76 crore.
The Plan expenditure is the highest for the civic body in at least a decade. Although the Plan preparation was advanced a few years ago to the end of the previous financial year to make available the entire period for project implementation, the process had suffered, especially after the COVID-19 outbreak.
In the 2021-22 financial year too, some momentum in implementation was achieved only by January. The Corporation had held daily reviews of Plan project implementation. Special reviews were held for sectors lagging behind in implementation.
Beneficiaries
The civic body also managed to increase the number of beneficiaries chosen for each project. Usually, calls were issued for the first set of beneficiaries, and the next lot were not called until notices were issued to the persons from the first set who had not responded. Now, the delay between the two calls have been reduced. It also organised social media campaigns to attract beneficiaries for projects that elicited low responses.
In the Ayyankali Urban Employment Guarantee Scheme (AUEGS) as well, the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation has generated more jobs than all other Corporations, with 1.78 lakh person-days of work and 95.88% expenditure.
