Vadodara: Contractors working for the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) are seeing red over delay in payments of works completed by them. Since November last year, they have been made to wait for over a month to receive payments.According to sources in the VMC, barring exceptions, contractors’ bills were cleared in about a week’s time if everything was in order. But since the end of last year, the process has been thrown out of gear largely due to paucity of funds at the civic body. It has been a hand-to-mouth situation with the brisk recovery of pending dues by the revenue department being a saving grace.In a memorandum to the VMC commissioner Dr Vinod Rao, the contractors have stated that they need to settle wages of labourers before Holi along with the accounts of suppliers next month. With payments drying up, they claim to be facing difficulties. They have expressed inability to continue works if payments were not released.While neither the ruling BJP nor the administration has so far revealed details of finances publicly, it is believed that the next few months may be crucial. If the octroi grant by the state government is delayed like previous years, VMC may also have to struggle to pay its salaries.The opposition that has been targeting the civic body over its finances believes that a crisis is looming. Former opposition leader Chirag Zaveri said that the VMC is yet to receive octroi grant for two months from the state government. “Along with the grant for education, the total amount due from the state government stands at Rs 136crore,” Zaveri claimed.Zaveri said that next month the VMC will need Rs 71crore - Rs 72crore for salaries, payments of contractors and a HUDCO loan instalment. He claims that there is no money for this and the VMC will have to rely on fixed deposits to make the payments. “The fixed deposits too are earnest money and security deposits that should ideally not be touched,” Zaveri said.VMC opposition leader Chandrakant Shrivastava had also raised the issue during the general board meeting. He had pointed out with data that the state government was not keeping its commitment towards octroi grant that always fell short.While grants from the state government may not be under the VMC’s control, the civic body has also failed to increase its revenue base. The political wing is reluctant to increase taxes and has been sitting on proposals to generate revenue like the vacant land tax and the streetlight tax.“We will be spending around Rs 220crore more on salaries and operations and management in the next financial year. Against this, the additional revenue generated through minor rise in taxes and other charges will be only around Rs 25crore,” said an official. The official pointed out that the shortfall would be difficult to manage.

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