Kuldip Bhatia Ludhiana January 19 At last contractors infamous for pooling to secure works at higher rates have succeeded in roping in officials of the engineering branch of the Ludhiana Improvement Trust (LIT) here to call their tunes and quite a few of them have also succeeded in securing development works of the Trust at some 15 per cent or even higher rates as compared to previous works of similar nature. At the same time some other contractors were said to have offered bids for works beyond their capacity with the tacit approval of the officials concerned. One of the government contractors who is also on the panel of the LIT said in the recent past several contractors had secured bids for development works at about one or two per cent less than the CSR (common schedule of rates) after forming a pool as against previous works of similar nature having been executed by other contractors at 18 to 20 per cent less than the CSR. In other words with the pooling by intending contractors and offering bids after reaching an understanding the LIT was incurring 15 to 20 per cent extra expenditure on development works and the booty was obviously being shared between benefitting contractors and obliging officials of the Trust. It has also been alleged that with the contractors being paid extra money (by way of higher rates) the rate of commission being offered to officials and employees at various levels had also gone up. In this game of mutual back scratching the LIT officials and the contractors were riding the proverbial gravy train while the precious financial resources of the Trust and public funds were being squandered away. The whistle-blowing LIT contractor has also charged the LIT officials of ignoring the working capacity of their favourite contractors and some of them had gotten away with works which were beyond their capacity taking in account their pending or incomplete works with other departments. More often than not the officials concerned deliberately or otherwise did not demand an undertaking or affidavit of pending or incomplete works from successful bidders which was another irregular practice where the allocation of the public works by government departments was concerned.

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