A sanitation worker picks garbage from a street in Patna. Picture by Ranjeet Kumar Dey

Patna, June 7: The citizens are not the only sufferers for the erratic functioning of the civic body. Its service providers are in the same boat.

The Patna Municipal Corporation expressed its inability to plug deadly manholes last week citing funds crunch. The sufferers were you and I.

Now, it has refused to clear the dues of a service provider citing vigilance objection. At the receiving end is A2Z Infrastructure Limited, the private firm hired one-and-a-half years ago by the Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC) to cart garbage and maintain cleanliness of the city.

Till date, PMC owes around Rs 6.67 crore to the company.

PMC commissioner Devesh Sehra revealed in a recent board meeting that the corporation would not clear the firm’s dues because the vigilance had lodged an FIR raising objections to its agreement with the civic body. The points of agreement would be verified before the corporation took any further step, he said.

“There is a legal liability on the corporation and we cannot go ahead without verifying the facts. It will take some time,” he said.

Deputy mayor Vinay Kumar Pappu appeared to be shocked over the corporation’s decision to withhold the payment of A2Z Infrastructure Limited.

“The commissioner had told the Board earlier that the vigilance had given a clean chit to the agreement after a thorough examination,” the deputy mayor said.

“In its correspondence with the senior officers of the urban development department, the vigilance officers had written that they had not raised any objection over the agreement and the dues of the company could be cleared. The latest bombshell from the commissioner has left everyone stumped,” Pappu said.

A2Z Infrastructure Limited officials said they had not heard anything about the latest development. “We met the PMC commissioner last week and he promised that the dues will be cleared within two-three weeks. He did not even mention anything about the objection of the vigilance to the agreement,” Vikas Jha, the deputy general manager of the firm, said.

The corporation had entered into an agreement with A2Z Infrastructure Limited in 2008. It had started its work on nine main streets in January last year and in nine other wards a few months later.