Northern Mining and Contracting Services has been put into voluntary administration with charted accountants and business advisory company Grant Thornton.

This means the administrator has chosen not to honour projects like the Cloncurry bypass contracted before August. 

The bypass contractors, Probuild Civil, contracted the company to complete the earthworks. 

It appears the receivers may not pay the debts left behind owed to companies that gave credit to Northern Mining and Contracting Services. 

Wagon Wheel Motel owner Wayne Chivers said he learned last Friday the sub-contractors would not pay the bill for 10 of its employees. 

The motel was owed $15,000 for board and food.  

Another sub-contractor employee’s bill was to be paid, but he worked at a local mine rather than on the bypass.  

Mr Chivers said the motel would not be paid for the first 10-day stint.

“We lost our money over that, hopefully we’ll be paid for the second stint,” he said. 

It was already a struggle for Cloncurry businesses. 

“Times are tough at the moment,” Mr Chivers said.

He was also disappointed because the employees would have been staying at the motel until October. 

Mr Chivers also pitied the fly-in, fly-out employees because they last left Cloncurry believing they would return to complete the job. 

The employees, who live as far away as Adelaide and Tasmania, left their personal belongings in their motel rooms. 

And the sub-contractor would not pay for their items to be sent back to them. 

“I felt for them too,” Mr Chivers said. 

Cloncurry Tyre Service owner Lee Cursio said he had a bill for the sub-contractor, but was hesitant to release the amount until he considered the legality of disclosing that information. 

A Northern Mining and Contracting Services spokeswoman had “no comment” about leaving the contract.