SHILLONG: The Jaintia Hills Autonomous District Council has asserted that it has diverted funds from the Special Assistance Grant for paying the salaries of employees as internal and temporary arrangement.
JHADC executive member in-charge of the civil works department, Phasmon Dkhar on Thursday said the “funds misuse” allegations of the BJP are baseless and such allegations have been made without proper proof.
“We have taken this money as a temporary arrangement and we will immediately return the money back to the Special Assistance Grant as soon as we receive our revenue share of major and minor minerals from the state government,” Dkhar said.
Pointing out that such internal arrangements have been made in the past, he said the council had to resort to diversion of funds as the situation had come to a point where the staff were on agitation mode.
He also denied the allegations that contractors were not issued bills for the work executed by them.
“There is no such thing as claimed by the BJP and contractors are receiving their bills and there may be one or two contractors who may have not received their bills due to technical fault. Once the errors are rectified, we will immediately release their bills,” he said.
“I have asked them to show one contractor whose bills I have held,” he added.
On the demands of the BJP to institute a CBI inquiry, he said the council in the past had satisfactorily executed all projects, for which it had even received a performance grant. Dkhar also said that the council has qualified and regular engineers who have been entrusted by the EC to undertake technical surveys, investigation and execution of different developmental projects.
He further asserted that the council was ensuring submission of utilisation certificates and the utilisation certificates were also accepted by the state government without any objection.