The Times of India 30.08.2012
HUDA pays over and over; clean-up bill Rs 61L
Gurgaon: HUDA
has claimed to have spent over Rs 61 lakh in three months for
sanitation and cleaning up of roads in over eight sectors in Gurgaon.
In its reply to an RTI
filed by Raman Sharma, HUDA gave area-wise details of the expenditure
and payments made for sanitation and clean-up works on roads and sectors
by private contractors. In the first three months, Rs 17 lakh, Rs 17
lakh and Rs 26 lakh were paid to over a dozen different contractors.
According to HUDA’s response, between January and March, Sheetla Mata
road and Palam Vihar road was cleaned up by different contractors five
times.
“The condition of these two roads, however, has not
improved much but HUDA kept on paying the contractor again and again
without checking the quality of work,” said Sharma. In January the two
roads were cleaned twice by two different contractors.
The RTI
reply stated that in January HUDA paid O P Sharma Contractors Rs 4.47
lakh for working in Sectors 5, 6, 12, 12A,18, Sheetla Mata Mandir Road
and Palam Vihar Road. Interestingly, the same month another contractor
Ansh Enterprises was paid Rs 4.91 lakh for carrying out sanitation and
cleaning up of the roads in 12, 12A, 5 and Sheetla Mata Mandir Road and
Palam Vihar Road.
In the same month another contractor, M/s Ram Premi Contractor, was paid Rs 4.69 lakh for working in Sector 22 alone.
In February, roads in Sectors 22, 23, 23A, 5, 12 and 12A were cleaned
up by different contractors. The two roads, Sheetla Mata and Palam
Vihar, were also cleaned up. The RTI reply also revealed that the
contractor, Ram Premi, alone was paid thrice, totally over Rs 8 lakh for
cleaning up 23 and 23A. “It is worth noticing that all the work was
sanctioned on the same day (23 January 2012) for Sector 23 and 23A. The
HUDA officials blindly sanctioned the works and made the payments,” said
the RTI activist.
The expenditure swelled drastically in March
and rose to Rs 26 lakh for the eight sectors falling under HUDA
division (2). The maximum payment, Rs 4.97 lakh to B P Sharma Contractor
for cleaning up roads was made for Sectors 3, 6, 5, 12A and Sheetla
Mata Mandir Road.
Work on Sector 22 roads was given twice to
another contractor, Dharamvir Singh Contractor, and payments of Rs 4
lakh and Rs 3.04 lakh were made by HUDA. The same contractor was paid Rs
2.51 lakh for clean-up work in March this year.
