Times of India: Puducherry: Thursday, November
15, 2018.
The Puducherry government-run Puducherry
industries promotion, development and investment corporation (Pipdic) limited
has an outstanding loan of Rs 107 crore as on March 31 this year and three
public sector enterprises alone account for more than 85% (Rs 91.9 crore) of
loan dues, says information provided to an RTI activist by V Adimoulame, Pipdic
general manager (administration) and public information officer.
On August 10, RTI activist P Raghupathy
filed an RTI seeking details of outstanding loans in Pipdic. He filed a first
appeal after he was denied information. Later, as per the PIO’s direction,
Raghupathy approached the Pipdic office and received the documents.
As per the information submitted by the
corporation, Pondicherry textile corporation (Anglo French textiles) has
availed industrial loans worth Rs 54.30 crore, Puducherry cooperative sugar
mill limited took loans worth Rs 21.94 crore and Jayaprakash Narayan
cooperative spinning mill limited Rs 15.65 crore as on March 31 this year, he
said.
“All the three public sector units failed
to repay the loans with interest availed from Pipdic on several occasions. It
is learnt that PSUs used the industrial loans to provide salaries to the workers
instead of investing in promoting the units,” Raghupathy said.
“The faulty policies of the government
will turn all its PSUs into sick units. Presently, Pipdic runs in profit. If
the prevailing situation continues, the unit will incur losses soon,” he added.
He urged the lieutenant governor Kiran
Bedi to direct Pipdic officials to initiate efforts to recover the arrears from
the three PSUs at the earliest. “The government, which has launched efforts to
recover arrears in excise duty, property tax and electricity charges from the
defaulters, must take initiatives in recovering the arrears from the PSUs,” he
said.
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