BMC to make all payments online

BHUBANESWAR: In a landmark step, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) will now make all payments online and every payment will be made public through the ‘Online Payment Solution’.Prior to this, there was no mechanism by which the public could know where all the BMC funds were being spent.Even though tax is being collected and funds were coming in from government agencies, no one knew where the money was being spent.But with this new scheme in place, each and every cheque will be traceable.From now, every payment to the contractors will be made through online cheque having all the details of the project.“Every contractor has a PAN number and the online document will have the PAN number along with the details of the project they have undertaken,” said BMC Commissioner Vishal Dev.The complete online payment system will be handled by the chief finance officer (CFO) of BMC Labanya Sabar.Every cheque will require the signature of the CFO and the establishment officer.The BMC generates around 3,000 files for every project.Keeping a track of all these files, court orders and progress made was a difficult task.“A major grievance of contractors and general public is that the files which are five to six years old are usually missing or untraceable.But with this online documentation, things will be much easier, said Sabar.“As far as I know till date there is no such mechanism in the public sector that has this kind of an online payment system,” said Dev.The online payment system will be available for the public in a month.People interested in knowing how the BMC money is being spent, can now access all the information by simply visiting the BMC website.The BMC also has plans to document the old files in electronic database.“We will be documenting old files and very soon they will be available online, said Mayor Ananta Narayan Jena.”It will be a time taking process, but it will be done eventually, added Dev.