Allotment of Sewa Kendras contract to erring company raises eyebrows
Govt had announced termination of contract in January citing firm’s inefficiency
JALANDHAR: The allotment of contract for running facilitation centres in Punjab’s 15 districts to BLS International Services Ltd has come as a surprise to many.
The company, termination of agreement with which was announced six months back for not running Sewa Kendras efficiently, signed a new contract with state government on Friday to operate centres in Zones 1 and 3 that include Amritsar, Jalandhar, Pathankot, Gurdaspur, Tarn Taran, Bathinda and Moga.
The firm, it has been learnt, has as many as 1.5 lakh online and offline applications pending with it from its last term in the 15 centres where it will be operating again.
AMENDMENTS IN NEW CONTRACT
Talking to HT, director governance reform Parminder Pal Singh said the state government and the operating company will share the profit in 60:40 ratio. “It is entirely a new contract under which government is expecting profit,” he added.
The previous SAD-BJP government had in 2016 inked a contract with BLS International Services to run around 2,100 Seva Kendras across the state till 2020. The contract carried a clause of gap funding, where the government was paying for losses incurred by the firm while running the centres that went up to ₹22 crore every month.
Under the new contract, the government will run around 500 facilitation centres across the state.
“Excluding the monthly estimated expenditure of ₹1.25 crore, goods and service tax (GST) and fees of the services that will go to government treasury, the profit earned by all the centres will be shared between the government and company,” Parminder said.
“The government this time will not do any gap funding in case these centres fail to make any profit. It will solely be the responsibility of the company to run centres,” he added.
SERVED 2 SHOW-CAUSE NOTICES
The Jalandhar district administration has served two showcause notices to BLS this month for not clearing pending applications and failing to manage other discrepancies at the centres. As many as 22,812 applications are currently pending in the Jalandhar Sewa Kendras.
A U-TURN
Citing it to be a ‘costly’ project, the present Punjab government had in January announced termination of the contract with BLS and decided to shut down around 75% of Seva Kendras in the state.
“This was an innovative project started by former deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal to bring various services of government under one roof. The decision of Congress government to rope in the same company after pulling it down earlier reveals the significance of the project. The government has made decision in the hindsight this time,” said sitting Akali Dal MLA from Nakodar, Gurpratap Singh Wadala.
“It is unfortunate that the same firm has been again given the contract,” rued an in-charge at a Sewa Kendra, wishing not to be named.
ZONE 2 GOES TO UT-BASED FIRM
Meanwhile, government has signed the contract for Zone 2 — that includes Mohali, Ludhiana, Patiala, Fatehgarh Sahib, Rupnagar and Sangrur — with Chandigarh-based Dr IT Group, where profit ratio between the government and company will be 80:20.
“Both BLS and Dr IT Group will start running the facilitation centres from Monday onwards,” Parminder said, adding that government was planning to divide the centres equally among urban and rural areas.