AMC facing crunch as liabilities touch ₹50cr mark

ALLAHABAD: The Allahabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) is facing a financial crunch. Its liabilities, including salary and pension arrears besides dues of its contractors, electricity bills, reached a whopping Rs 50 crore in October 2017.

The AMC, which caters to civic needs of Sangam city divided into 80 wards, has around 4500 employees as of now.

The corporation has a monthly budget of Rs 14 crore including salary of its existing staff, pension of its former employees besides other expenditure.

Against its monthly expenditure, the corporation receives Rs 8.67 crore grant from state government.

Besides, it generates around Rs 5 crore revenue every month in the form of taxes. According to CP Maurya, chief revenue officer of the corporation, financial condition of the corporation had deteriorated in the past two years.

“The corporation till March 2015 used to get a monthly grant of Rs 13 crore. However, the urban development department from April 1, 2015 started shifting around Rs 5 crore every month to Jal Nigam for upkeep of the existing sewage treatment plants. This dented the financial condition of the corporation gradually,” he said.

As per the officer, out of the Rs 50 crore liability, around Rs 24 crore was arrears of salary of employees including outsourced personnel, Rs 11 crore of unpaid retirement funds while a little over Rs 25 crore included unpaid dues of different government departments including power, public works and health.

The Allahabad Municipal Corporation has around one lakh pensioners whose monthly pension budget is around Rs 2.5crore.

“As all municipal corporations are semi-government bodies, we have to generate a significant share of our monthly expenditure on our own. Almost every week, a demonstration is organised on the corporation’s premises,” added Maurya.