CMC workers on the road; not collecting garbage but driving three wheelers
Private hospitals were requested by the Government to pay 15% on all hospital charges including fees paid to doctors for medical consultancies and surgical operations commencing May 2016. The hospitals charged these VAT payments from the patients. I understand that these monies have been remitted to the Inland Revenue Department by the hospitals. However the Supreme Court had given a judgement making these payments illegal as Parliamentary approval had not been obtained for the VAT Bill.
Parliamentary approval was finally obtained for the VAT Bill on October 26. 2016 and VAT came into effect from November 2016.
Will the IRD refund the VAT payments made prior to Nov. 1, 2016 ? Refunds should be made to the hospitals so that they could contact their patients and make the refunds. The IRD is under obligation to do this but no information has been given as yet.
The amounts accounted by the hospitals could be considerable as doctors’ fees for surgical operations are very high and so are the room charges and nursing facilties.
Recently I wrote about the incompetency of the Colombo Municipal Council in collecting trash from residential properties. Thank you for publishing my letter.
I got a chance of speaking to some people who know what is happening in this Council. It is a well known fact that the employees working in the garbage collection report for duty every morning and then vanish thereafter. It is an open secret there that they ‘vanish’ with the knowledge of their supervisors.
After ‘vanishing’ they go and drive three wheeler taxis. The money that they collect from this ‘second job’ is shared with the supervisors for protecting them. As a result the CMC does not have sufficient employees ‘on the road’ to collect garbage. Thus they cannot have several trucks for garbage collection and cannot fix proper schedules for trash collection.
This is all due to very bad management. All the inefficient and unfit people in the Management should be kicked out. They must dissolve the Municipal Council and hand it over to a private company or to the adjoining municipalities to run it. Angry resident
Via email