GH contractors air grievances to CM

SHILLONG: All Garo Hills PMGSY Contractor’s Union has apprised the Chief Minister about the difficulties the contractors face due to the ban on stone quarry in West and South Garo Hills districts.
In a letter addressed to Chief Minister Mukul Sangma, the Union said that the PMGSY works had to be stopped until further notice due to the blanket ban of stone quarries in West Garo Hills and South West Garo Hills.
While the Union appreciated the action on the part of the Government in this move against illegal mining, which was neither benefitting the State nor the GHADC with losses in royalty, it said that works like PMGSY, ADB projects, DRDA projects, State developmental works, forest projects and individual house constructions have been brought to a standstill.
According to the Union, the PMGSY projects are time bound with a deadline of June 2017 for the completion of the projects, submission of bills and the payments.
“Looking at the present scenario, meeting this deadline will be next to impossible.”
“Though the forest department auctioned the materials seized by them, the amount auctioned does not even cover 10% of the total required materials”, the Union said.
Since the ban is only for the districts of West Garo Hills and South West Garo Hills, contractors working on projects in East, North and South Garo Hills are not facing this problem, thus the progress of work in those three districts will not be hampered, the Union stated.
According to the Union, the Government and the concerned department should look into the grievances of the PMGSY contractors working in West and South West Garo Hills due to this delay.
Another problem cited by the Union is the increase in forest royalty, which was revised recently.
“As the DPRs of the projects currently under process do not take this revision into account, the contractors would incur heavy losses if it were to be deducted from the current bills”, the Union said,.
Adding that the deductions from the projects that commenced before this revision should have status quo and deductions be only made as per the previous forest royalty that is given in the DPRs.
“The deductions as per the new revisions should take effect from the date of revision and all previous projects should be exempted from this revised royalty”, the Union said.
According to the Union, if they re-unable to complete the projects by the June deadline, the ongoing projects should be given an incomplete final bill and the 2.5% earnest money deposits and the 7.5% security deductions from the running bills should also be returned to the contractors.