BENGALURU: The Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) will overhaul the processing of contractor bills to make payments faster, time-bound and transparent, with bills to be processed through a streamlined digital system and delays at any stage subject to accountability.
Bengaluru Development Minister Krishna Byre Gowda on Saturday instructed officials to initiate the reforms, which will apply to works funded through government grants as well as the five city corporations’ own resources.
Under the new system, work bills will be processed through the Integrated Financial Management System (IFMS), with scrutiny by the Project Management Consultant (PMC), verification and certification by field engineers, pre-audit and approval by the Chief Engineer before payment, the minister said.
Each stage, including PMC scrutiny and quality control checks, will have a prescribed timeline. Field engineers, for instance, will have seven days to verify and certify bills. If an officer or agency fails to act within the stipulated period, the bill will be deemed approved and moved to the next level, he added.
Krishna Byre Gowda said that bills can be withheld or rejected only with reasons recorded in the system. If an officer fails to act within the prescribed period and an irregularity is subsequently established, responsibility will be fixed for the delay. Payments will be made directly to contractors’ registered bank accounts through IFMS using OTP-based authentication, replacing manual RTGS transactions, he said.
The entire lifecycle of public works, from awarding contracts and execution to bill processing and final payment, will also be brought onto the IFMS platform. Engineers will record physical progress through the Real-time Information Monitoring System, and bill processing will be linked to the progress recorded there.
The GBA will also launch a public dashboard through which citizens can track the status of ongoing and completed works. The name of the engineer in charge and contractor responsible for each work will be displayed at the worksite and recorded officially.
Final security deposit payments will be released directly by the Executive Engineer of the concerned division, without a separate reference to the DCF and Commissioner. An Internal Audit Wing will also be established within the GBA or the corporations to conduct periodic audits, supplementing the annual audit conducted by the Chief Auditor, GBA.