Contractors in a fix as Corpn bills stay uncleared

Several contractors who had taken up civil works in the city Corporation have been left high and dry as the local body has been asked to take back the bills submitted after March 24 and include it in the spill-over projects for the next financial year.

The contractors, who were expecting their payments to be credited at the end of the financial year, say they will now have to wait for months for the payments for the work already done. “We were told earlier that the bills will be accepted till March 31, as usual. The Finance Minister had earlier issued a statement saying that the bills after March 24 will be put in a queue system and everything will be cleared in the financial year itself. Now, the bills from March 24 onwards will be sent back and we will have to wait for a longer period to get the payments. Around 200 bills, for several crores of rupees, in the city Corporation are pending. Clearly, there is a scarcity of funds,” says Jayachandran, of Corporation Contractors’ Federation.

Corporation officials say the payments may get cleared in a few weeks. The local body had faced quite a few issues in the last week of March to gets its bills cleared at the district treasury. The officials who were tracking the figures for all the local bodies say the numbers of the other Corporations continue to shoot up, even as the city Corporation’s remain stagnant.

In the end, due to the non-clearance of bills, the city Corporation ended up with less than 64% expenditure, while all the other Corporations crossed 70% and some even 90%. Though the bills were expected to be cleared earlier this year, compared to the previous years, the several months of tender boycott by its contractors, following the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), hampered these plans.