- I Paid A Bribe
- 12 years ago
- 2521 views
Give me money & fly away with your licence OR get it after ages!
- Municipal Services
- New Business Registration or License
- Paid INR 6,300
A licence from municipality is a basic document required to get other licences to do business.
I am into food business and one of the requirement to get a licence from food safety department is a licence from corporation. I took a commercial building (a shop) for rent and applied for corporation licence for that building at Thiruvananthapuram Corporation Health Inspector's Office, Poonthura. The rented building despite being a commercial one, the officer there insisted that it was a residential building according to their records. They said, the building I applied for was a 2BHK house and that it will take months of roaming around offices to get the thing corrected. I knew that they were playing a game. They interchanged the TC numbers of my shop with that of that shop owner's home; from whom I rented the shop.
My tax consultant had earlier mentioned that nothing moves at Thiruvananthapuram Corporation without paying heavy bribes. Getting a licence was my requirement; I cannot do business without getting this basic licence. I told them, "Sir, no matter what, please, some how get this corrected." He said, it will take Rs 5-6,000 to get it corrected. I said "OK, please do it."
On that day, I gave them a total of Rs 6,000. I received the licence the next day morning. Rs 500 was additional paid to the peon who handed over the licence. Out of the 6,500 paid, Rs 200 was the actual licence fees; The rest was bribes.