Monday was a hectic day for the over 100 staff members of the Kochi Corporation as they were busy engaged in preparing and submitting bills to the treasury to encash them before the end of the fiscal.
Around 100 bills worth Rs. 7 crore were submitted in the morning hours.
As the submission of bills was permitted till 10 p.m. on Monday, bills were submitted in two instalments.
The second set of bills was submitted for encashment by evening, officials of the corporation said.
It was the bills pertaining to the construction and repair of roads and allied works and construction of small buildings like anganwadis that were submitted for payment.
Delay in paper work
It was the delay in the completion of paper works of several projects that led to the last hour rush.
There had been a delay in preparing the tender documents, obtaining the approval of the District Planning Committee and identification of the beneficiaries for a host of social support schemes this year.
These factors had an escalating effect, leading to mad rush during the final hours of the current fiscal, he said.
It is estimated that the local body could spend 70.83 per cent of the plan fund allocated by the State government for the current year.
Lat year, it could utilise only 64 per cent of the allocated funds, sources said.
Giving out the details of the utilisation of funds, officials of the local body said that 63.76 per cent of the maintenance grant for roads could be utilised.
In the non-roads sector, the civic body utilised 59.23 per cent of the allocated funds.
The corporation officials said the civic body could utilise 70.64 per cent of the funds released by the 13{+t}{+h}Finance Commission. A special meeting of the corporation had approved the proposal for earmarking the funds released by the commission for various projects including purchase of land at Brahmapuram.
