Fund crunch hits Visakhapatnam civic projects
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Visakhapatnam: Financial crunch has turned out to be a major hurdle for the GVMC to complete its ongoing projects in the city. Officials of various wings have expressed their inability to go ahead with the works due to unavailability of funds and other technical barriers.
Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) is the major project being implemented in the city and consists of two dedicated corridors — Simhachalam corridor (20 kms) and Pendurthy corridor (23 kms) — to be built at a cost of `453 crore.
Eight-five per cent of the work has been completed on the Simhachalam corridor and 75 per cent of works have been finished on the Pendurthy corridor. The GVMC has spent around Rs 324.50 crore so far for both the corridors and works have been deferred due to the delay in release of grants from the government. Now, the GVMC owes Rs 60-70 crore to the contractors for various works completed.
Municipal commissioner M.V. Satyanarayana, during a review here on Tuesday on ongoing projects by minister of tribal welfare P. Balaraju, said that 15 out of 25 proposed projects under the programme have been completed and the rest would be finished in the current year. He said that Housing and Urban Development Corporation Limited (Hudco) has released a loan amount of Rs 150 crore, but to no avail. “As per norms, initially we have to utilise government financial sources and then have to explore other means. Fearing interest burden, we have not utilised the amount so far and it would be available in a couple of weeks,” Mr Satyanarayana said.
Still an amount of Rs 277 crore has to be released by the government and the project is already delayed by two years. Chief engineer B. Jayarami Reddy explained about the progress of various projects and added that still they had to receive Rs 120 crore from both the state and Central governments.
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