The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is planning to resume making payments to contractors implicated in the roads scam. Senior civic officials said the decision was taken to facilitate the completion of ongoing road projects, which were earlier awarded to these contractors. The BMC will make partial payments to 13 contractors, who have discontinued work on 281 roads in the city citing lack of funds. Although, the civic body said it will recover the misappropriated amount, to the tune of Rs 900 crore, from the payment made to those implicated in the scam. Civic officials of the roads department said the work for each contractor will be broken into various segments, following which payments will be made accordingly. “We are in the process of making the calculations of how to make payments in a way that we are able to recover the financial losses, worth around Rs 900 crore, incurred by the BMC. For instance, if the contractor completes work worth a certain amount, we will withhold a portion of the payment and give the balance for each segment,” said a senior civic official. The official added that the payments will be made for works to be completed before the monsoon. The BMC currently has around Rs 700 crore in the form of various deposits, including security deposit, retention money, additional security deposit and performance guarantee, for each of the contractors. “We have to recover an additional amount of at least Rs 200 crore. We will hold on to these funds, until the action against the contractors has been finalised in case of penalties. The balance amount of the funds, if any, will then be returned to the respective contractors,” said the official. Earlier, BMC chief Ajoy Mehta had issued orders to withhold pending payments of ongoing works in the interest of the civic body, following the submission of a second inquiry report which probed into the quality of work on 200 roads in the city. The payments were withheld for 16 contractors, of which, ongoing road works are being carried out by 13. In November last year, the inquiry had revealed that the total value of the work on all roads was estimated to be around Rs 1,700 crore and as per the BMC’s calculations, the shoddy work amounted to more than 50 per cent of the cost. In the western suburbs, 11 of the “tainted” contractors are currently working on around 180 roads, while in the eastern suburbs, six of the contractors are working on 34 roads and nine are working on 67 roads in the city zone. The official said the BMC will start making the payments after issuing showcause notices to the 10 contractors implicated in the second inquiry report. They are being prepared by the roads department and are expected to be sent out by this week.
