‘Govt has no funds to pay Rs 1000 cr it owes to contractors’

The state government has no funds to pay more than Rs 1000 crore it owes to thousands contractors for development works they did in the past five years.

Unless the pending bills are cleared, the contractors havesaid, they wouldn’t take up new works. This has brought development works to agrinding halt in Kashmir.

   

“The government is finding it difficult to raise funds toclear such a huge debt.

This liability has been accumulated from 2014. So there isprovision in the budget 2019-2020 approved by State Administrative Council.Governor administration is now working on clearing a part of the liability inorder to persuade contractors to resume work as their boycott has caused anembarrassment for the administration,” he said.

The official said that even the payments for repair of roadscarried out in 2014 are pending.

More than 30,000 contractors decided in March to boycottworks till they are paid their bills. Co-chairman of Joint ContractorsCoordination Committee Farooq Ahmad Dar said the government was “doing nothingbut buying time”.

“They are not sincere to resolve this issue,” he said whileadmitting Kashmir is therefore losing peak construction season to thestalemate.

Chief Engineer Roads and Buildings department Kashmir SamiArif said that they have taken up the issue of pending liabilities with theadministrative department.

“We have started repair of roads and in coming days we arehopeful that other construction works under R&B will be expedited,” hesaid.

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