351
FOBLIC
། ། ། ། ། །
RECORD OFFICE
—————པ་ཁ་ རཪ་
Reference -
C.O.882/12
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
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We recommend accordingly that the Municipality should be required to resume its functons with regard to scavenging and watering and the maintenance of side streets, and that the Govern- ment should cease to meet the sum of Rs.118,500 now allotted to these purposes in the budget. The Municipality has sufficient re- sources from which to meet the cost of all its services, and there is no reason why the transfer should not be made before the end of the current financial year. The Government is carrying on the night-soil service by means of a contract which has still two years to run. This service should also be restored to the Municipality at the expiration of the contract.
As regards water supply and sewerage we think that the Govern- ment should carry through the constructional work now in hand. which in the case of water supply is being charged to the Improve- ment and Development Fund and in the case of sewerage to a Special Loan Fund, but that both services should be restored to the Municipality on the completion of the work. In the mean- time the cost of current maintenance of the completed part of the sewerage system should be included in the ordinary expenditure of the Colony instead of, as at present, being made a charge on the capital of the loan. The receipts from sewerage rates are shown as ordinary colonial revenue, and it follows that the maintenance cost- should fall into ordinary expenditure.
33. On the return of the services we do not think that the Government contribution of Rs.126,000 should again become pay- able, or that the proceeds from the vehicles and animals tax should again be handed over to the Municipality. The lump sum con- tribution was intended to be a composite payment in lieu of quay dues and of municipal rates on Government properties. We do not consider that any valid claim to receive quay dues or to impose a local rate on government buildings arises or should continue to be recognized by the Government. The Municipality does not own the quays and has spent no money on them. Its claim is no more than an assertion of the old-fashioned and obsolete claim to levy a transit charge on goods passing through the town, and we do not see why this right should be accorded to Port Louis any more than to other townships or districts in the Colony. The rateable charge upon Government buildings should be reduced to a payment for actual services rendered to particular buildings, and on this basis would be a comparatively negligible sum. There is no other ground of principle on which the Government of the Colony should be called upon to contribute to the revenues of the Municipality.
The taxes on vehicles and animals and the occupational licence duties should in our view no longer be treated as available for the local services either of Port Louis or of the townships, but should be regarded as part of the general revenues of the Colony. In his liability to these taxes the owner of a vehicle or the licensee who
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lives in a township cannot be distinguished from the taxpayer who He is distinguished by the fact of his lives in the rural area.
Both the Municipality and the townships liability to local rates.
We
are very lightly rated and we see no reason why they should not be required to defray the whole cost of purely local services from funds locally raised for the purpose. As the rating machinery is avail- able nothing more is necessary than to increase the rate. recommend, therefore, that the contribution now paid by Govern- ment to the Boards of Commissioners, amounting in the case of Curepipe to Rs.80,000, in that of Beau Bassin and Rose Hill to Rs.76,000, and in that of Quatre Bornes to Rs.27,000, should be discontinued.
34. The arrangement whereby the Colonial Government has made itself responsible for the carrying on of the night-soil service for the township of Curepipe is as anomalous and indefensible as that obtaining with Port Louis. It owes its origin to the unwilling- ness of the local Board of Commissioners to observe conditions laid down by the Medical and Health Department, and in this case also we consider that the Government should not stop at half measures in dealing with a recalcitrant local authority. The cost of the local service to the general revenues is shown in the current Estimates as Rs.68,000, but a part of this is recovered in the forin of night-soil fees. We have already recommended that these fees should cease to form a part of the Colonial system of revenue, and we now add that in our opinion the local Board of Commissioners should be required to take over the whole sanitary service of the townships, and that they should be left to raise whatever additional local revenues are necessary for the performance of these duties. It will then be for the Government acting on the advice of its medical advisers to prescribe the conditions to be observed for the carrying out of this work, and to enforce compliance with these conditions by some other means than relieving the local rate-payers of their obligations. As the Board of Commissioners is a wholly nominated body the enforcement of such conditions as are required in the interests of the general public health of the Colony should not give rise to any insuperable administrative difficulties.
A similar case is that of the maintenance of cemeteries in the rural area.
The Municipality and the townships maintain their own cemeteries. But the Government in the Medical Department maintains 21 rural cemeteries at a cost of Rs.33,736, less than half of which is recovered by fees. The care of cemeteries is very clearly a local charge, and these cemeteries should gradually be transferred to the district boards, whenever a vacancy occurs in the post of cemetery keeper; these posts are pensionable and the incumbents