With a capital worth crores of rupees being blocked by the telecom service providers in Punjab, the SME vendors associated with the companies are struggling hard to survive.
The vendors performing the civil works and laying down telecom foundation towers for companies like Spice & Hutch are running from pillar top post to get their outstanding payments cleared.
The situation is aggravated by the fact that no company official is ready to take the responsibility even when the work got executed by them. Due to these dues the vendors are not able to borrow money from the banks as well.
A vendor who did not want to be named, told FE, ?I did civil work for Spice Telecom and a payment of about Rs 15 lakh is due to me for the last two years. Our dues used to be regularly settled by Spice earlier but since the company has entered into a tie-up with a Chinese company, our payments are getting delayed.?
Spice Telecom entered into collaboration with China based ZTE for the execution of sites. As ZTE has only one representative at the regional Spice office, in Mohali, these issues are not being addressed properly by the company.
Another vendor who worked for Hutch has dues of about Rs 20 lakh outstanding against Hutch and Rs 15 lakh against Spice. He shared with FE: ?The companies are delaying the payments for all the vendors which has blocked our capital unnecessary. We would wait for some more time or else sue the companies.?
The vendors also rued that since they did not had any fixed capital to mortgage, they were not eligible for loans and subsidies from any financial institution. ?We raised loans from the banks only which are charging a whopping rate of interest. We need money to repay the loan as well,? added the vendor.