Handwara, Mar 10: Contractors associated with Jal Shakti Department Tuesday locked the Division office Handwara in protest against the non-release of their long-pending bills.
The protesting contractors said that despite completing several water supply schemes in different areas of the division, they were yet to receive their payment for a long time. “Our repeated requests and representations to the department have failed to yield any concrete result,” they added. They said that the delay in clearing their payment has pushed them into severe financial stress and they were unable to clear payments of labourers engaged in the projects. “We have completed several works under the department as per the directions, but our payments are still pending.
The department must clear the dues without further delay,” Sajad Ahmad, a contractor from Handwara said.
“We are unable to figure out why the concerned officials are reluctant to clear our payments when the government has already released the payment,” said another contractor. The protesting contractors warned that if the government fails to release their pending payments in the coming days, they will be left with no option but to dismantle the executed works. They urged the concerned authorities to intervene at the earliest and resolve the issue by releasing their genuine dues without further delay.
