Contractors’ association gives December deadline to government to clear pending bills

The Karnataka State Contractors Association has warned that it will release the “corruption report card” of the State government in December, if the pending amount of ₹33,000 crore from the last two years is not released within a month.

The contractors had alleged that the demand for bribes had increased during the Congress government’s tenure compared to the BJP’s tenure.

Will stop work

“If the government fails to pay the dues, we will stop all the contract work and protest across the State in the first week of December. We want to meet the Governor of Karnataka and the Congress high command and file a complaint against the State government,” G.M. Ravindra, general secretary of the association told The Hindu.

Speaking in the press conference on Friday, R. Manjunath, president of the association, said that they had met and appealed to all the Ministers, including the Chief Minister many times, but to no avail.

“Eight departments including the Public Works (PWD) and Water Resources Department have not released the pending bills of the contractors so far. No matter the party in power, successive governments have released outstanding bills during Gauri-Ganesh, Dasara and Deepavali festivals. However, the current government has not,” he alleged.

GST difference

“Though the government announced that it would bear the difference in GST from 12% to 18%, there is no order in this regard so far. It has been implemented in the neighbouring States of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Maharashtra about 5 years ago,” they said.

Further the association stated that seniority is not being followed in payment in any other department except the PWD. Even after meeting with Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister and the Ministers of various departments two or three times and making requests, the government is not able to resolve the problems of the contractors, they said.

Flagging another issue, the contractors said, “Since the officials of the Urban Development Department have called package tenders in 10 municipal corporations, it is very unfair to the small and medium class contractors. Officials in the Labour Department are making package tenders worth ₹784.00 crores, eight to nine districts together in a manner that will benefit the big contractors. The package tender will not benefit most of the contractors in Karnataka”.