By Nitin Brahme;Saturday, November 06, 2010
Snake park contractors BSS have not submitted audit report of govt funds for the last 5 years, but PMC neither asks questions nor stops sanctioning funds
It is imperative for any government body to ensure there is clear information on how the taxpayers’ money is being used.
However, the Katraj Snake Park has had no audit for the last five years. And the administration does not seem to be perturbed by it.
The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has just sanctioned fresh funds without asking any questions. The running of the park has been contracted out to the Bharatiya Sarp Vidnyan Sanstha (BSS).
It has been revealed through a right to information (RTI) query that the PMC had given the snake park Rs 86,09,402 but there are no accounts whatsoever. The RTI application was filed by activist Bhagvan Nivdekar.
Ideally, the BSS should have documents to show how it had spent the citizens’ hard earned money and the PMC should have asked BSS to table them.
However, the BSS has been given another Rs 32,05,504 for the year despite the ‘slip’. And they will get this amount annually for the next five years. That would stand at 1,60,27,520 (that is around Rs 1.7 crore).
To this annual amount, 10 per cent would be added to rationalise inflation etc. The new contract is from August 8, 2010 to August 7, 2015.
The PMC stated that it had given Rs 86,09,402 to the BSS from August 8, 2005 to June 7, 2010. In the same report, the PMC said that the BSS has not submitted the audit report from August 2005 to August 31, 2010.
This fact was stated by the PMC on October 13, 2010.
Also, along with the maintenance contract, the PMC has given one Tata Sumo to the BSS along with a driver. The contarct with BSS was drawn on August 8, 2005 for five years.
The contract clearly states that the BSS must submit an annual audit report to the PMC under section 21 of the contract.
Naresh Zurmure, who has just joined as the additional commissioner of the PMC, told Pune Mirror that he had “just come in and does not know about previous” matters. “The previous officer had made the proposal.
I just signed it, as the administrative head, on behalf of the PMC commissioner. But I will inquire into the matter now,” he added.
Nivdekar told Mirror that the administration of the snake park was being looked after by BSS for the last 25 years.
“The administration has just renewed the contract with BSS. But at the time of renovation of the park, the PMC did not invite the tenders.
It does not have audit reports of the snake park of the last five years and does not know anything about the BSS’ actual work. So, on what basis did the PMC sanction fresh funds?” he said.
Repeated attempts by Mirror to contact Nilimkumar Khaire, president, BSS, at the Katraj Snake Park and on his mobile, did not yield any result.
.JPG)
.JPG)
