Dechen Dolkar

The sub-contractor of the Hindustan Construction Company (HCC) of Tangsibji Hydroelectric (THyE) Project claims the firm has bills pending for more than three years. 

The HCC had awarded a sub-contract to Unicon Infra Private Limited for the supply of construction chemicals, excavation of loose soil, loading and transportation to the same dumping yard at the dam and hire of an excavator in 2018. 

The managing director of Unicon Infra Private Limited, Raju Upreti, said that the total amount for the contract work was around Nu 18.27M; it has received Nu 10.94M so far. “We have pending bills of around Nu 5.5M for more than three years,” the managing director said. 

The MD said that the HCC deposited Nu 1.5 million after the company filed a case in court last week. 

The managing director claimed that on November 19, 2021, they visited the HCC office to meet with the project manager. He was directed to meet with the Accounts and Quality Control department.



He claims that the company was also asked to do bill verification many times. 

He also claims that on January 7, the company submitted all the documents and they assured to release the amount of Nu 1.5M and the balance will be released within two months.

“Despite all our efforts, our invoices are delayed. We have visited the HCC office for the clearance of the bills more than 20 times which incurred further expense but till date, we did not get the pending amount,” Unicon Infra Private Limited MD said.

He said that a few weeks back the company received calls from the accounts department of HCC stating that they have to sign documents where it is mentioned that HCC will release Nu 500,000 and they will not make any further claims until the balance amount is released. “But we did not accept it.”



He said that because of the delay in the payment, they couldn’t execute any further business.

“We were on the Non-Performance Loan client list in the bank which will hamper our banking status for the future endeavour,” he said.

He also said that they have also requested the HCC to deposit directly to the overdraft loan account since the bank has been asking for payment of the loan.

The deputy managing director of THyE, Sujan Rai, said that they deal only with the HCC, not with the sub-contractors.

The project manager of the HCC, Manpreet, said that there would not be any issues in releasing the pending bills.



He said that currently since he is in quarantine, HCC will call the contractor and pay the pending bill soon.

The Unicon Infra Private Limited has also given a legal notice letter to HCC on payment of pending bills on April 26.

The managing director of Unicon Infra Private Limited said that they will also forward the case to the court.

It was also learnt that the HCC has also not paid the full bill amount to two contractors who forwarded the case to court and won.

Advertisement