Meghalaya PWD's bank of sanction touches Rs 1000 cr: Dy CM

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SHILLONG:

Meghalaya Deputy Chief Minister, Prestone Tynsong on Thursday informed that the bank of sanction of the Public Work Department (PWD-Roads) from the State plan has touched Rs 1000 crore.

"The bank of sanction of Rs 1000 also include the outstanding dues which are required to be paid to the contractors in the State," Tynsong informed here today.

He, however, clarified that this bank of sanction does not include payment of the dues of contractors who had just received the work order.

"We are clearing the outstanding dues not less (than) Rs 250 to Rs 300 crore annually from the State plan. During this current financial year, we do have about Rs 250 crore and, this amount is to clear the outstanding dues of the various contractors by March 31 next year," Tynsong said.

According to him, the bank of sanction has touched Rs 1000 crore since they are outstanding dues which are pending for the last four to five years.

He also informed that after the Meghalaya Democratic Alliance (MDA) government took over in 2018, they have tried their best to bring down the bank of sanction.

"The amount has piled up since the new sanction has come up. We have recently sanctioned projects amounting to Rs 300 crore," Tynsong said.

It may be recalled that the previous Congress-led government had sanctioned projects which had crossed the budget allocation in December 2017 and January 2018 ahead of the Assembly polls in 2018.

Reacting to this, Tynsong admitted that the previous government had sanctioned an additional Rs 325 crore that went beyond the budgeted norm.

The MDA Government had to enhance the budgetary allocation for the PWD to sanction more scheme during 2019-2020 since no projects were sanctioned in 2018-2019.