Nagpur: The way the cash-strapped Nagpur Municipal Corporation handles its finances is often difficult to explain. Consider this: at a time when the NMC struggles to fund development works, it spent over Rs3.58 crore of taxpayer’s money on to issue 2,409 advertisements over the last four years. These advertisements were issued in local newspapers, radio, local cable networks, mobile floats and cinema slides for various promotional activities and recovery of property tax arrears.For 2017-18, the standing committee has earmarked Rs2 crore for issuing advertisements. Of this, the civic administration had made a provision of Rs14,37,372 for issuing advertisements related to property tax and water bills dues. As against this, the NMC spent Rs30 lakh for the purpose during the amnesty drive to recover Rs380 crore property tax dues, NMC’s public relation officer Ashok Kolhatkar revealed in a RTI reply to activist Abhay Kolarkar.Of the Rs2 crore budget, Rs15 lakh were earmarked for NMC’s awareness programmes including segregation of dry and wet waste.Despite spending such a huge amount on advertisements, the NMC’s 24-day amnesty scheme yielded a poor response from property tax and water bill defaulters with a mere 8.05% recovery, Kolarkar said.Against, the total arrears from property tax and water bills of Rs560 crore — Rs380 crore from property tax and Rs180 crore from water bills under the amnesty scheme — the NMC received Rs45.08 crore (Rs31.47 crore property tax and Rs13.61 crore water bills).The NMC had even offered 90% waiver on interest in property tax and 100% on interest in water bills. Arrears of Rs11.16 crore were waived from property tax and Rs16.17 crore from water bills for a total loss of Rs27.33 crore.A cursory look at the expenditure reveals that from October 29, 2014 to January 13, 2016, the NMC’s public relation department spent Rs1.13 crore for floating advertisements. According to data provided by the department, 199 advertisements were issued between January-March 2013, and 485 in 2013-2014 fiscal, 450 in 2014-2015, 465 in 2015-2016, 665 in 2016-17 and 145 advertisements were released in the current fiscal so far.