JMC’s clean city mission on wrong track

Tribune News Service

Jammu, March 30

The Jammu Municipal Corporation (JMC) has failed to create a monitoring mechanism to track the sanitation work being carried out by the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the city, resulting in undue favour to some individuals.

This has raised a question mark over the transparency in the allotment of sanitation work to the NGOs in Jammu since 2011.

Facing manpower shortage for years, the JMC has been allotting sanitation work to nearly a dozen NGOs within the municipal limits of the winter capital.

As per the audit report titled ‘Annual Technical Inspection’, conducted by the government, “There was lack of monitoring of the compliance of the contractual terms and performance by the NGOs, which resulted in undue favour to some organisations and diversion of the JMC’s resources for the jobs outsourced.”

All the NGOs engaged were required to deposit a Call Deposit Receipt (CDR) of Rs 50,000 before the allotment of the contracts by the municipality. However, eight of 10 NGOs who were allotted the contract had not deposited the requisite CDR till December 2016 despite the lapse of more than five years from the date of allotment. The report states that as per the terms and conditions of the contract, a minimum of 22 safai karamcharis were required to be provided by the NGOs in each ward every day.

“In two wards where the NGOs had deployed 20 and 41 safai karamcharis, respectively, the prescribed conditions of the contract were followed. However, in the remaining 69 wards, the deployment remains from 0 to 21 safai karamcharis and the short deployment ranged between 1 and 22 sanitation workers,” the report has revealed.

In another instance of mismanagement, the audit report revealed that as per the recommendation of the 13th Finance Commission, the Urbal Local Bodies (ULBs) should recover at least the operating and the maintenance cost of services rendered to the public.

However, it has been observed that the ULBs had neither prepared a complete list of households, shops and other establishments from whom the user charges were to be recovered nor had they put in place a system of issuance of bills against the services delivered.

What audit report says... 

• As per the government audit report titled 'Annual Technical Inspection', all the NGOs engaged were required to deposit a Call Deposit Receipt (CDR) of Rs 50,000 before the allotment of the contracts by the municipality. However, eight of 10 NGOs had not deposited the requisite CDR till December 2016 
• Also, a minimum of 22 sanitation workers were required to be provided by the NGOs in each ward every day. However, except two wards, the deployment in the remaining 69 wards was from 0 to 21 sanitation workers