Selection by tender
Clean India Journal spoke to a couple nationalised banks where particular attention is paid to the cleaning of the local head offices, as a “matter of prestige”.
Largely based on the tender process, the cleaning contracts are awarded on L1 basis. This explicitly means the contract is awarded to the lowest bidder. While, cleaning is carried out on a daily, monthly and yearly basis depending on the area to be cleaned, specialised cleaning is restricted largely to the head offices of most nationalised banks. Most of the head offices of PS banks are huge structures that need specialised maintenance. Right from plumbing to landscaping, all the work related to facilities maintenance is outsourced to various vendors on AMC or periodic contracts.
In the entire facility maintenance, “housekeeping is important”, according to a bank source. One of the leading nationalised banks has a committee in place which has drawn the SOPs to keep the local head offices across India clean and well maintained. Here again the payments are made to the workers on the basis of minimum wages as stipulated by the Central and State governments. The number of workers too has been specified and any absenteeism entails a deduction the payments. “It is but natural that if the housekeeping agency is not able to provide the specified number of workers on any given day, we have to penalise them,” said the source. “The payments are made in the presence of the Assistant Labour Commissioner who ensures that the wages are paid to the workers.” In a recent move to further ensure that workers receive their due salary, some of the nationalised banks are pushing on the payments to be credited directly to the worker’s account. Even in cases where the worker does not have a bank account, bearer cheques can be issued. This will make the transaction absolutely clear.”
Unlike private and international banks, rendering services to nationalised banks in adherence to all the statutory compliances becomes difficult to manage. “This is precisely because nationalised banks work on fixed budgets. To the extent that the service provider is at times forced to pay out of his pocket to make the statutory payments. In this case, rendering quality services on fixed budgets becomes difficult,” says Sanjay Khanvilkar.
Contracts are signed for a period of two to three years. Through out the tenure of the contract if the payments are on constant terms irrespective of changing prices then how can the vendor meet expenses? Fixed budget based contracts do not have provisions for changing costs. This is where malpractices originate, says Khanvilkar.
“The service provider is at times forced to pay out of his pocket to make the statutory payments. In this case, rendering quality services on fixed budgets becomes difficult.”
“There are various ways of manipulating a consolidated challan. The word consolidated by itself is misleading, as it represents the entire company’s challan and not a specific person’s challan.
“In fact, the government sector understands the need of facilities management, but at the same time is not giving it its due importance. The private bank and international banks are very strict with compliances. Even though margins are bit squeezed, comparatively it is better to work with them as they are good pay master,” adds Khanvilkar.
Small time loans
As more and more small time housekeeping companies are aspiring to take up big contracts, the impediments caused by cash crunch could be one of the main factors leading to malpractices. Most small time housekeeping companies, largely in the unorganised sector, have expressed their inability to acquire loan from banks to meets their working capital requirements in any given contract. Many cooperative, private and SME banks are providing loan facilities to housekeeping companies. CIJ spoke to Bharat Cooperative Bank to understand the procedures involved in obtaining loan for housekeeping companies.
One of the major criteria for any housekeeping company to avail of loan facility is that the company should have an account in operating for at least more than six months. From the account behaviour, the bank will get a fair idea about the company’s growth and performance. Says Anilkumar R Amin, GM, Bharat Bank, housekeeping companies basically require business loan or working capital loan which can be considered based on the contract in hand, their previous turnover, three years balance sheet in case of older companies and banker’s calculation based on stock, contract, receivables, etc. In other words, bank can extend term loans based on the stocks and receivables. But as a safety precaution, the bank or any financial institution for that matter would require a collateral security for any kind of loan extended. Many private banks are even extending loans against the contract document from the client company with the assurance that the proceedings gets directly credited into the housekeeping company’s account with the bank.
Apart from business/term loans, for working capital requirement one can go for cash credit facilities. The bottom line is that if the borrower is good, no bank will hesitate to do business with them.
