| Conflict between Councilor, CEO over Rs 50 lakh loan to Director ULB | | | ASHWANI SHARMA
EARLY TIMES REPORT
UDHAMPUR, Oct 3: A loan amounting Rs 50 lakh transferred to Director Urban Local Bodies (ULB) Jammu has become an issue of conflict between a Councilor of Municipal Council (MC) Udhampur and its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) with the former claiming that the local body is already facing scarcity of funds while the CEO refuting such claims.
Santosh Kotwal, CEO MC Udhampur when contacted told this reporter that Rs 50 lakh as loan was given to the Urban Local Bodies Jammu on the directions of his Head of Department (HOD).
He claimed that there are no insufficiency of funds, MC has about Rs 4 crore which had been sanctioned under 14th FC with it for the development works while the money given as loan was earned by the Municipal Council Udhampur through the revenue generated by it.
Kotwal said that the MC Udhampur Councilors should follow proper channel for developmental works to be executed. On demand of the Councilor regarding that some IAS or KAS officer should be appointed as CEO of the MC Udhampur, Kotwal said that officers like him too are on a Deputy Secretary Grade posts which is ranked much above from a newly appointed KAS officers.
Meanwhile, MC Udhampur, President Surinder Singh Khalsa said that reason behind poor developmental works is not the inefficiency of the Councilors but lack of engineering wing with the MC on its own.
“Earlier we had our own AEEs, JEs etc but now all these engineers are from PWD who is already suffering manpower crisis, so the developmental works are delayed,” he claimed.
Earlier, yesterday MC Councilor, Preeti Khajuria has told reporters that the MC, CEO has loaned Rs 50 lakh loan to Director Urban Local Bodies Jammu whereas the MC itself is going through a financial crunch due to which it is facing difficulties to pay wages to casual labours and is grappling with shortage of Safi Karmacharis, maintenance of vehicles while it is unable to sanction new street lights, switches and wires viz a viz other day to day necessities.
She had also claimed that MC Councilors are blamed by the public for no developmental works and had demanded a probe into the loan given to the Urban Local Bodies, Jammu by the MC CEO. She had also demanded that the CEOs should be IAS or KAS ranked officer. |
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