17-05-2025
PWD owes Rs20,000 crore in bills to contractors, budget Rs19,000 crore
Pune: The state public works department owes Rs20,000 crore in pending bills to contractors against its allocated budget of Rs19,000 crore for this financial year, prompting its officials' decision to approach financial intermediaries for long-term financing to bridge the funding gap.
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"The current liability exceeds Rs20,000 crore. While provisions for Rs 19,000 crore have been made in the state budget, additional works will require finance from financial intermediaries and various other sources," a senior official of the public works department (PWD) told TOI.
He said they had initiated the process of reaching out to various such intermediaries to complete large scale infra projects, to be prioritised based on importance.
"We will phase out the work as per priority and seek long-term finance, depending on the projects' importance," the official said.
This development follows contractors halting work across the state because of delayed payments. While PWD acknowledges Rs 20,000 crore in dues, contractors claim the actual figure exceeds Rs45,000 crore.
Earlier this month, PWD issued guidelines limiting new projects, acknowledging that excessive sanctions beyond the approved budget caused delayed payments, cost escalation and quality issues.
"It is necessary to formulate a specific policy regarding newly sanctioned works and limit their number," the guidelines state.
The new guidelines prioritise roads essential for communication between state highways and major district roads, routes with high traffic volume requiring urgent improvement and projects with completed detailed project reports (DPRs). Emphasis has been put on preventing work duplication, completing land acquisition before road construction and finishing roads connecting bridges before the construction of the latter.
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"While executing works on state highways and main district roads, it will be ensured that there is no duplication of work," a senior PWD official said.
The guidelines also address the practice of initially underestimating project costs to include more works in the budget and submitting revised approvals later. "Works costing more than the received budget make it impossible for the govt to pay bills from the available funds.
Delayed funding increases cost substantially, resulting in poor quality work," another PWD official said.
'All potholes on state highways repaired'
The state public works department officials claimed that they had addressed all pothole-related complaints for state and district roads ahead of monsoon.
"As of now, 1,00,000km road network does not have any pothole-related complaints," an official said following a review meeting.
The state govt has launched PCRS 2.0, an app-based pothole reporting system with specific response time frames. The deputy engineers will get seven days, executive engineers 15 days and superintendent engineers 30 days to act on complaints.
The govt has approved two different android apps — one for citizens to report issues and another for PWD engineers to manage complaints. This system replaces last year's online-only PCRS platform.
