The Indian Express              02.08.2013

Under fire, BMC wants Swiss auditors out

The civic administration had proposed to reappoint the Swiss firm for Rs 11 crore for the third consecutive year since 2011. Sending back the proposal, standing committee chairman Rahul Shewale shifted the blame for bad roads on the firm and demanded that the civic administration hold a tendering procedure to appoint another third party auditor for BMC roads.

"SGS has been the third party quality auditor for the last two years. Yet the fact that the road condition has worsened reflects on the quality of the firm's report," Shewale said.

BJP member of the committee Manoj Kotak said, "If the corporation has fixed the responsibility for maintaining the quality of roads on SGS, the quality should have improved in the last two years. However, that has not happened, so the company should not be reappointed unless the corporation clearly fixes responsibility for bad roads on certain engineers or officers."

Congress corporator and member of the standing committee Asif Zakaria demanded a white paper from the civic administration detailing the work carried out by contractors related to road works in the last one year.

"There is no accountability of these companies. BMC pays them without fail yet people continue to suffer because of poor quality of work," Zakaria said.

In early 2012, a PIL was filed in Bombay High Court against the civic body for appointing SGS as its road works auditor for roughly Rs 7 crore without inviting bids. However the court ruled in favour of the corporation saying, "Such an order, if passed, may completely thwart the intention of BMC to appoint an authority to assess its own performance and would go against public interest."

Last week, the standing committee, facing flak for poor quality road works, blamed former additional municipal commissioner Aseem Gupta, then in-charge of the roads department, for the city's bad roads. Gupta, now Thane municipal commissioner, said road works had been intentionally delayed by certain parties in the corporation. "Third party audits were introduced during my tenure in BMC and I believe they are an extremely important factor for ensuring quality of road works. This aspect of road works should by no means be scrapped if the road quality in Mumbai is to be improved," he had said.