BENGALURU: A civic crisis may emerge at the dawn of 2022 with garbage contractors in Bengaluru threatening to go on a strike from January 1. The Garbage Cleaning Contractors' Association from Bengaluru had submitted a letter to the chief minister on December 8 listing their issues.
SN Balasubramanya, general secretary of the association, said: "The
BBMP
hasn't cleared our bills for five months - June, September, October, November and December. If we estimate the monthly bills to be Rs 40 crore, BBMP's total arrears to us is over Rs 200 crore."
"The special commissioner, finance, said that they will be deducting money for the month of June as they had provided meals to the auto-tipper drivers. We had entered into no such agreement with them," added Balasubramanya.
Some of the contractors have been working with the Palike for over a decade now. There have been payment delays, but not to this extent, Balasubramanya said.
BBMP special commissioner, finance,
Tulasi Maddineni
, said: "We held back bill payment for the month of June as there were some recoveries we had to make. The chief commissioner is yet to take a call on that. The bill for December is not due yet. We haven't been able to clear the bills for September, October and November due to a financial crunch. BBMP roughly needs about Rs 45 crore for SWM door-to-door collection and transportation bills."
Balasubramanya pointed out that the contractors are burdened as they have to manage payments of workers and also take care of fuel and maintenance of vehicles.
BBMP chief commissioner Gaurav Gupta said, "We had a meeting with the contractors on Tuesday and Wednesday, understood their grievances and resolved a number of them. We understand that the public will be affected if civic services are disrupted. We are working to ensure least inconvenience to citizens."
About payments, Gupta said: "We are working towards zero pendency in the system. There have always been some issues with regard to payments. We are examining these issues and all genuine claims will be honoured at the earliest. Payment for June was said to be held up on account of certain objections. It has been concluded that expenses towards lunch of auto-tipper drivers was our call and hence no deduction is necessary."