Corporation to return Rs 54 lakh to NMF

CHENNAI: The City Corporation on Friday announced that the sum amounting to Rs 54 lakhs, retained by the civic body from the private conservancy firm Neel Metal Fanalca, would be given back to the agency in four installments.The amount was held back as a deposit for adjusting billing discrepancies. The decision to return the amount in installments was taken at a high-level meeting chaired by the Mayor M Subramanian and attended by Commissioner D Karthikeyan, Joint Commissioner (education) TN Venkatesh and Deputy Commissioner (health) S Madhumathi at the civic body’s ward-142 office. Besides other top officials from the civic body, representatives from the private firm also attended the meeting, which lasted for about 30 minutes.According to official sources, the first installment of Rs 15 lakh would be given to NMF in another couple of weeks. The second and third installments carrying Rs 15 lakh, each would be returned to them at appropriate time and about Rs 9 lakh would be returned to the firm in fourth and last installment.Since the firm sought the held back sum to infuse cash liquidity in the company and to overhaul its fleet of vehicles used in conservancy operations across the four zones, Corporation decided to return the amount in installments. It may be noted that the civic body in its last Council Meeting passed a resolution and amended the agreement on period of holding back the retained money of the firm from three years to three months.Speaking to City Express, Commissioner D Karthikeyan said, “After verifying the expenditure details of the first installment, if the firm indeed utilised the money to repair its stranded vehicles, second installment would be released.”Karthikeyan also warned the firm to carry out the conservancy operations without any sluggishness in the remaining months (up to December 31, 2011), else the civic body would blacklist the agency, which will eventually disqualify them from bidding for conservancy works in the Chennai Corporation in future.  To verify the expenditure, a high-level committee has been constituted and the superintendent engineer (solid waste management) and assistant commissioners from zones, 3,6,8 and 10 would be in the team to monitor it.