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| CAG slams Estates Dept for giving undue benefits to officials | | Water usage charges pile up to Rs. 12.97 cr | | Bivek Mathur
Early Times Report
Jammu, Mar 29 : The Estates Department is giving undue benefits to officers residing in its quarters and has even failed to collect water usage charges that have piled up to Rs. 12.97 crore.
The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) in its audit report has submitted that scrutiny (November 2012) of the records of Executive Engineer, Estate Division Jammu showed that instead of raising bills on account of water usage charges against the licensees, the bills had been raised by the PHE department against the Estate Department for bulk water supplied to buildings/premises under the control of Estate Department.
The report further reads that the Estate Department had not put in place a mechanism to ensure that the water usage charges for the bulk water supplied by PHE were actually recovered from the licensees.
The cumulative outstanding bills raised by the PHE Department against the Estate Department stood at Rs. 12.97 crore (Rs. 8.09cCr PHE Division-I Jammu as of March 2014 and Rs. 4.88 cr Division-II Jammu as of September 2012).
Audit also noticed that 'No Demand Certificates' were issued by the Estate Department in favour of licensees who had retired from the services without paying water usage charges.
Further, on being pointed out in the audit, the Deputy Director Estates Jammu without specifying the reasons for lack of a mechanism to recover the charges from the licensees stated (November 2012) that the NOCs to the licensees had been issued only for rent/furniture/fixtures and that the charges for water usage had to be met by the individual licensees.
The reply given by the Deputy Director, Estate, Jammu was not appropriate as per CAG as the bills were being raised by the PHE against the Estate Department for bulk water supply and neither PHE nor Estate Department had put in place a system either by providing water consumption meters or other wise to apportion the cost of bulk supply to individual consumers.
The CAG concluded in its audit that in absence of any mechanism to ensure recovery of water usage charges from the licensees resulted in extending undue benefit to them due to non-recovery of Rs. 12.97 crore with bleak prospect of recovery of dues in future.
It is worthwhile to mention here that the Estate Department is the custodian of buildings meant for providing residential accommodation to government officers/staff and other functionaries. The allotment of accommodation is carried out by the Director Estates and at the time of allotment, a license deed called 'License for occupation of residential accommodation' is drawn between the grantor (Estate Department) and the licensee (the occupant government employee). The deed inter-alia includes a clause for payment of electricity and water usage charges by the licensee. |
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