The Indian Express                20.08.2013

BMC tops up road contracts to woo big firms

BMC is preparing a master plan to concretise major roads and lay asphalt on them. express Archive

To ensure big infrastructure companies evince interest in building
roads, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) may tweak tender
norms by not only doubling the ticket size of contracts but also loading
the costs by including annual maintenance works.

According to BMC officials, the master plan to concretise major
roads in the city and lay asphalt on them is under preparation. This
will involve road tendering contracts worth Rs 7,000 crore over the next
four years, they said. The size of each road contract is likely to be
raised to Rs 300 crore from Rs 165 crore so far.

“At present, road contracts are allotted with a defect liability
clause (DLP) clause, which includes just pothole-related repairs.
However, to ensure better quality of roads, the contractors now need to
maintain these roads, which includes resurfacing and re-laying of 15-20
per cent of the roads every year,” said Additional Municipal
Commissioner S V R Srinivas.

Besides less political interference and a single-window clearance
system, the BMC will also ensure that continuous and big stretches of
roads are allotted to a single contractor than the works being disbursed
across wards.

“These companies usually have the experience of constructing
highways or long stretches of roads and find it difficult to construct
smaller patches of roads due to the smaller scale of work,” said an
official.

Despite tall claims, the civic administration has failed to rope
in large firms to allot road contracts for three years in a row. As a
result, same old contractors have bagged these contracts.

This year, however, the BMC hopes to attract large firms by including maintenance post-construction work in road contracts.

“These firms have expressed their concerns over the delay in
carrying out storm water drain work, which affects the quality of roads.
So we need to ensure BMC will conduct drain repair work along with road
construction,” said Srinivas.

Some corporators are, however, sceptical about the BMC’s plans.
“These big firms will construct only long and major patches of roads,
but what about minor roads that account for a majority of the city’s
road network,” said Raees Shaikh, Samajwadi Party corporator.

“The lacuna in the BMC’s contracting system is lack of
supervision and implementation. Present tender conditions that the
contractor should own his own cement plant ensures that only six
contractors who have been allotted road contracts for past 10 years
remain eligible. One must change this rather than assuming that big
companies can make a difference,” said Shaikh.

The civic administration, which met representatives of reputed
infrastructure companies such as Larsen & Toubro, Gammon India,
Simplex Infrastructure, IRB and HCC, will soon begin the tender process
to allot road contracts worth Rs 900 crore for the next year.