Pending Bills: AP Contractors Threaten To Commit Suicide

Due to the accumulation of bills, the sand contractors are angry with the AP/YCP government. The contractors are saying that if the bills are not cleared immediately, the only option left is to commit suicide. On Wednesday the contractors staged a protest in Amaravati at APMDC building and threatened that they would end their lives if the government doesn’t respond.

Going into details, to meet the sand requirements in Andhra Pradesh, the state government through APMDC has contracted with an organization called JP Ventures Limited for the supply of sand.

Accordingly, the government handed over the sand reaches to the organization. The organization has made contracts with contractors for sand mining, loading and supply. Around 300 contractors have been supplying thousands of tonnes of sand for the past two years.

As per the agreement, the bills are to be paid to the contractors by JP Ventures within a month. It’s been two years that these bills are unpaid by the state government. The problem occurred with JP Ventures taking money from the customers and is not making timely payments to the state government and contractors. JP Ventures has to pay close to Rs 500 crore for state government while Rs 70 crore for the contractors.

Thus it can be assumed that JP Ventures is pocketing the money with sand contractors and is facing great difficulties by not paying the money to the government and not paying the bills to the contractors.

All the contractors who were associated with JP Ventures are fuming for non-payments. The contractors approached the government as they don’t have director access with the management of JP Ventures. In that line the contractors had heated arguments with APMDC officials.

The contractors are angry that they have gone around the authorities to collect the bills but all their attempts have failed. Having tried all options, the contractors said that they have decided to commit suicide. Will the AP state government take this matter seriously and make arrangements to pay the bills immediately?