Chinthan Sales, the company that operates the mobile incinerator purchased by the State government in 2012, has shut down the machine alleging that the government owed it more than Rs. 30 lakh..
A company representative here claimed that the government owed his firm Rs 34 lakh. While Rs. 22 lakh is reportedly the balance for the purchase of the machine, the rest is the ‘operations and maintenance'’cost for November and December 2012 and for January 2013. The incinerator, which was shifted to Anayara ahead of the Attukal Pongala, was last operated on Saturday.
"When I spoke to executive director of the Suchitwa Mission George Chackacherry about the pending payment, I received an aggressive response.
“I made it clear to him that we cannot continue operating the incinerator without clarity on the government stand on the pending payment,” the company official said.
Sources in the Suchitwa Mission told The Hindu that the Mission had written a letter to SIDCO — which purchased the incinerator for the government — not to release the final payment to Chinthan Sales. A top Mission official said the letter was consequent to the non-completion of crucial alterations in the machine as suggested by the government-appointed technical committee that inspected the incinerator.
"The committee had asked the company to make changes in the device to allow garbage to fall in the middle of the incineration chamber. This has not been done. We did not want to make all the payments before these major changes were made. Now it is for the government to take a final call on the matter,” the official explained.
