GCC owes Rs 380 crore to contractors, stops clearance of new bills due to fund crunch

CHENNAI: The Chennai Corporation owes its contractors around Rs 380 crore in dues since June due to lack of funds. In addition to these dues, for which the bills have been cleared, bills amounting to Rs 300 crore have not been uploaded because the internal provision for contractors to upload them has been disabled since June. Contractors said that the Rs 380 crore in due were for bills which have already been cleared by the project management committees or the departments concerned. This includes Rs 160 crore to the two solid waste management contractors, apart from others, mostly road and stormwater drain contractors. Official sources told TNIE that the corporation is yet to receive funds under schemes including the Tamil Nadu Urban Road Infrastructure Funds (TURIF), Tamil Nadu Urban Infrastructure Financial Services Limited (TNUIFSL), Singara Chennai etc. On how long it might take for the civic body to streamline payments, a corporation official said that they were unable to immediately arrive at a timeline. We are trying to clear pending payments as and when we receive funds. For instance, a portion of funds under The Tamil Nadu Urban Finance and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (TUFIDCO) was recently released, and under TURIF the GO has been issued and funds are expected soon, an official said. A contractor who has been awarded stormwater drain projects said that the city corporation had called for around Rs 700 crore worth of tenders for stormwater drains, of which work worth Rs 300 crores has been completed. However, they are unable to upload the bills for the completed works online, he said. In another 20 days, more work is expected to be completed and the pendency will continue to pile on, a contractor said. Corporation officials said that the concerned department heads, in these cases, will write to the commissioner for additional funds. Once this is done, the allocation will be made and the contractors will be able to upload bills for clearance, the official said. Contractors said that the city corporation has a tripartite agreement with the TreDS (Trade Receivables electronic Discounting System) platform RXIL for bill discounting by which credit systems are facilitated through financial institutions for unpaid invoices. For this, the invoices have to be submitted by the city corporation, which have also not been done yet, another contractor said.