The Indian Express 25.03.2013
City roads may not be free of potholes this monsoon, too
Despite the civic administration's claims of a pothole-free monsoon, Mumbaikars will have to brace for bumpy rides during the rainy season. BMC's ambitious project of concretisation and asphalting of roads is yet to take off due to issues over black-listed contractors and red-tape.
While only 30 per cent of road construction work in the western suburbs has been completed so far, in island city, it is yet to begin, and contracts in the eastern suburbs are yet to be allotted.
Though BMC had awarded road contracts worth over Rs 1,000 crore for concretisation and asphalting in the city last year, it has delayed the process for a range of reasons. Civic officials claim that it will now have two months to undertake road construction work; concretisation and asphalting of roads will stop during monsoon (from June until November this year).
While work on south Mumbai roads was delayed following a strict directive from Chief Minister to cancel contracts of blacklisted firms, contracts for eastern suburbs have been delayed due to technical reasons, said officials.
Major road repairs in south Mumbai were put on hold for over a month by BMC, which was deliberating on whether to award a contract to a firm that was under the scanner. Though the contract was finally awarded to the same firm, work on these roads was yet to begin, said officials.
RPS Infraprojects (formerly RP Shah), a company blacklisted by the building proposals department in 2010, submitted the lowest bid for a basket of projects estimated to cost Rs 275 crore for south Mumbai roads. It bid with Prakash Engineering and Supreme Infra.
The contract was part of a Rs 530-crore bouquet of road repair and construction projects in south Mumbai. This entails concretising and asphalting over 65 km of roads in Churchgate, Fort, Marine Drive, Dadar, Worli and other areas. Under this, 129 roads will be re-laid. Of these, 27 major ones will be concretised and 102 small and arterial ones will be asphalted. The projects were to be awarded last year after a standard tendering procedure.
"We are planning to expedite the repair process to ensure better roads during monsoon. We still have two months before monsoon begins," said G M Agarwal, deputy chief engineer of BMC's roads department.
In the eastern suburbs, the process to appoint contractors for concretisation of 24 roads at a cost of around Rs 85 crore and asphalting of 106 roads at cost of Rs 168 crore was yet to be completed, said an official. "The delay is due to paper-work and bureaucratic hurdles," said a senior civic official.
