KOCHI:Until last week, Kochi Corporation’s Plan fund expenditure was only 51.24 per cent.
But when the financial year came to an end on Tuesday, the Corporation officially recorded a spending of almost 68.63 per cent of the Rs 105 crore allocated as People’s Plan funds for 2014-15, thanks to Mayor Tony Chammany’s signing spree over the past two days.
Bills related to civic work such as maintenance of roads piled up on his table during these days and they were processed from desk to desk with utmost speed, making one wonder whatever happened to the bureaucratic delay for which the local body is famous for.
All the hard work was part of the last-minute run to present the bills, cheques and challans of the Plan Fund expenditure in the State Treasury before March 31.
It has almost become a ritual in the local body to squeeze out whopping sums from the treasury in the last two days of the financial year. The large chunk of the bills was sanctioned at the last minute to keep up with the mandatory expenditure figures reposed by the state government, that is 65 per cent of Plan funds.
Civic administrators have always objected to such a financial practice, alleging that this last minute hurry to submit bills is done without checking the quality of work being done by contractors.
There has been instances in the past where the hurry even resulted in the change of name of repaired roads.