The Indian Express   13.08.2012

Civic body increases road contract size by 200%

Despite the BMC’s failure last year to attract big players for its road contracts, the civic body has not given up and instead increased the contract size for work on asphalting and concretisation of roads by 200 per cent.

Of the total Rs 970-crore road contracts that will be handed out to various private contractors through tender processes this year, the civic administration has raised the contract size of each contract to Rs 150 crore for this financial year from last year’s maximum of Rs 50 crore.

The corporation is looking to award contracts for work on asphalting and concretisation of roads to big-ticket players, such as Larsen & Toubro, Hindustan Construction Company, Simplex Infrastructure, J Kumar, and Unity Infra Ltd.

Chief engineer of the roads department G M Agarwal said, “We have clubbed the contract for road work as it will ensure entry of bigger and better players. We hope this will bring more accountability and better quality of roads in the future.”

In 2011, the civic administration had increased the cost of a single road contract from Rs 15-20 crore to Rs 50 crore to attract bigger contractors.

Having drawn flak for the poor condition of roads every year, the BMC had blamed local contractors for shoddy work done with inferior quality construction material. After a recommendation of the expert Standing Technical Advisory Committee, the civic body had planned to hand over the responsibility of building, repairing and maintaining a major chunk of all roads to large infrastructure firms to improve accountability.