Patna, July 6: State urban development department principal secretary Shashi Shekhar Sharma has directed Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC) officials to clear the pending bills of A2Z Infrastructure Pvt. Ltd, which carries out waste collection work in select parts of the capital, at the earliest.

In a meeting with PMC and A2Z officials at the secretariat today, Sharma directed PMC functionaries that the bills sent by the firm be verified within a week.

Earlier on Monday, the empowered standing committee of the corporation had instructed officials to clear payments within 15 days after which the firm announced to go back on its decision to stop waste collection work. PMC officials, however, had made it clear that the payments would be made subject to verification of bills and scrutiny of the work carried out by the company.

According to sources, Sharma demanded to know from officials as to why bills had not been cleared on a monthly basis over the past 17 months.

On Saturday, the firm had written a letter to PMC and had warned to stall work, as the civic body had failed to pay a single penny of the Rs 7.5 crore outstanding dues to the company from January last year, when an agreement was signed between the two parties.

Meanwhile, PMC officials were also called to a review meeting of the urban development department with deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi and were asked to improvise upon holding tax collection rate.

Sources said PMC had a target of Rs 31.32 crore from revenues last year, while the actual collection stood at Rs 23.22 crore. “Tax collection work needs to be expedited and PMC must achieve a cent per cent target,” Modi said.

“There are 3,69,000 electricity connections under the corporation area, while PMC has fixed only 1,70,000 homes. A list of electricity connection holders has already been made available to the civic body. That should be made a basis to increase number of holdings in the city,” Modi added. He also instructed that new tax collectors should be appointed after advertising for the posts and they be recruited on a four per cent commission basis. “Apart from this, a list of names of people who hold large amount of outstanding dues should be prepared and notices should be sent to them regarding property attachment or sealing of bank accounts. Tax collectors should not only contact property owners from 7am to 12 noon but should meet owners of commercial establishments till 7pm to collect taxes from them,” he added.