The Hindu     24.03.2017 

27% fund use at civic body

‘Not much fund lapse due to carry-over’

With barely a week for the current financial year to end, fund utilisation in the city Corporation is hovering at 27%. Corporation officials cite various reasons, including the shift to a new software for the tendering process and the shortage of implementing officers, issues which they hope to iron out by next year.

Out of a total of 820 projects set for the year, around 200 will be dropped and replacement projects will take their place.

“There won’t be much of a fund lapse as we have been allowed to carry over those projects for which technical sanction has been accorded and agreement executed. This has been done for 620 projects,” says a Corporation source.

Due to the delays, the projects could go into technical sanction stage only by the end of November last year.

“A better part of the year was lost in shifting to the new software and the training process. We also shifted to a new system to assess the schedule rates. This shift has helped us in achieving savings, especially in the price of tar. But getting used to the changes did take time. Next year, it will be more streamlined,” says the source.

Lone officer

The Superintending Engineer being the sole implementing officer for all the 820 projects was another issue that the Corporation has been facing.

The government has now given permission to the Corporation to make those from the level of Assistant Executive Engineer implementing officers from next year.

“Now, the situation is such that each of the projects have to go through the Superintending Engineer and has to be signed by him. This movement of files up all these levels create a lot of delays. Also, one officer cannot pay attention to everything, including spillover projects. Some of the AEs have been implementing officers for more than 100 projects in panchayats, while in the Corporation they are not given any such responsibility. With this state of affairs changing next year, we have hopes of achieving better numbers next year,” says the official.

This year, the Corporation’s estimate is that the fund utilisation will cross 60%, taking into account the bills that are to be settled in the coming week.