Interlocking tiles: Joshi recommends chargesheet against 3 MC officials

Minister Joshi has now recommended that superintending engineer H S Khosa, executive engineer Rakesh Sharma and junior engineer Rakesh Singla be booked in a chargesheet for providing undue favour to the contractor.

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The tiles also failed the quality test in May last and Mayor Harcharan Singh Gohalwaria has not passed the orders to blacklist the firm till now. The work to install interlocking tiles in the city started in 2011 and not even 50% of work has been completed.

In May last, as per the report from ‘Testing & Consultancy Cell’ of Guru Nanak Dev Engineering College, the sealed samples (provided by Ludhiana Municipal Corporation officials under the RTI Act) of interlocking tiles used by contractor M/S Captain Enterprise on Gill road failed the test.

The report said that the contractor used 80 mm interlocking tiles having 32.50 Compressive Strength MPa but as per Indian Standard Code No. 15658: 2006 the compressive strength should not be less than 40.00 MPa.

The Ludhiana MC officials, since the work started in 2011, were well aware of the inferior quality of interlocking tiles being used by M/S Captain Enterprise but no action was taken against the firm.

It was only in 2014 that a recommendation was sent by executive engineer Karamjit Singh from Zone C to higher officials, including Mayor Harcharan Singh Gohalwaria, the then MC commissioner Shruti Singh and the then additional commissioner Sumit Jarangal to blacklist the firm due to constant complaints and poor quality of work.

The file recommending blacklisting the firm was forwarded to the Financial and Contractual Committee which holds power to blacklist a contractor from applying for any tender in future and forfeit the amount paid.

Talking to Newsline, an MC official said, “We have sent numerous recommendations to blacklist this firm. The report is already submitted and lying in the mayor’s office, yet to be signed and forwarded to F&CC. A tile cannot have less than 40.00 compressive strength. It indicates how much pressure a tile can handle. 32 MPa shows that tile will break off very easily.”

The project of installing interlocking tiles was of Rs 2 crore and was to be completed within six months of the work order in 2011.

Other than Gill road, the MC also allotted work of installing tiles in Model Town Extension, Vishal Nagar, ward number 29 and Prabhat Nagar to the firm. All works are lying stalled.

Kuldeep Singh Khaira, a city resident who raised the matter with MC officials, said, “All proofs are against the contractor but the mayor is mum due to political considerations.”

Mayor Gohalwaria, however, said, “F&CC has nothing to do with quality of material; engineers are responsible for it. They are paid for being at sites and get work done. F&CC decided to give two months’ time to firm but it failed to complete the work, and the deadline is over. Now MC commissioner should take action against contractor and I am not concerned if he is son of Akali leader or anyone else.”