Take up work if you can wait for payments: AP govt tells contractors

We have to wait and see if anybody bids as per the new conditions, a senior official concerned noted.

The Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy government has come up with a new clause in a tender notification, making it clear that only those contractors who could wait for payments may participate in the bid process.

The Water Resources Department is the first to implement this by imposing a "special condition of note" in the tenders called for various drainage maintenance works.

"The payment of bills will be made based on the availability of plough back funds. In case of delay in payment, the contracting agency shall have no right to challenge in the court of law," the Drainage Division of the Water Resources Department said in the tender documents it issued recently.

It further asked, "Only such contractors who can wait till realisation of bills without approaching the courts only need to bid for the works." Such a clause is said to be the first-of-its-kind in any government tenders.

The new clause has been incorporated in the latest tenders, floated on May 23, in the backdrop of growing number of court cases wherein some bureaucrats were even awarded jail terms for non-payment of bills to contractors, particularly related to MGNREGP works, official sources said.

Interestingly, the estimated expenditure for the works proposed to be taken up by the Drainage Division, Chirala, ranges from as low as Rs 1.04 lakh to a high of Rs 15.43 lakh, totalling to a gross of about Rs 2.5 crore.

"These are mostly regular operation and maintenance works like removal of weed, clearing of jungle growth, removal of shoals and de-silting of medium and minor drains," an official of the Department said.

The Water Resources Department has been allocated a sum of Rs 11,482.37 crore in the 2022-23 budget.

"Already contractors are shying away from taking up any government works because of non-payment. By brazenly inserting such clauses in the tender document, you are only driving them further away," a senior bureaucrat remarked.

According to estimates submitted by different departments, the state government owes a staggering amount of over Rs 1.30 lakh crore to contractors, who executed various development works, and also to vendors who supplied different materials.

With the non-payment resulting in court cases, the government is ostensibly seeking to preempt further litigation.

"The drainage tenders close on June 6. We have to wait and see if anybody bids as per the new conditions," a senior official concerned noted.