In A bold move to improve the condition of roads across the city,the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has for the first time decided to loosen the control that local contractors have over ward-level road contracts and instead award all new road contracts this year for roads wider than 30 feet to major infrastructure companies. Acting on a recommendation of the Standing Technical Advisory Committee,the civic body will hand over the responsibility of building,repairing and maintaining a major chunk of all roads to large infrastructure firms to improve accountability. Having drawn flak for the poor condition of roads every year,the BMC has often blamed local contractors for shoddy work done with inferior quality construction material. The BMC now hopes that roads will drastically improve when bigger,well-known and reputed companies are given the job. This,however,will come at a price. The roads budget for this year has been doubled from Rs 500 crore to Rs 1,000 crore,even though the amount of work to be carried out is not significantly greater than last year. The BMC will soon invite tenders that are expected to attract big players such as Larsen & Toubro,Hindustan Construction Company,Simplex Infrastructure,J Kumar,Unity Infra Ltd,etc,officials said. While currently,a single road contract is not worth more than Rs 15-20 crore,the new tenders will be worth anything between Rs 50-120 crore. Instead of ward-level tenders,all tenders for roads more than 30 feet in length will be clubbed into three packages for concrete roads and three packages for asphalt roads (for island city,eastern suburbs and western suburbs). The concrete road tenders will be worth approximately Rs 100 crore each,while those for asphalt roads will be worth Rs 50 crore. Additional Municipal Commissioner Aseem Gupta said Rs 549 crore has been kept aside for bigger roads,the tenders for which will be filled by big companies. The six packages will cost about Rs 549 crore. Roads less than 30 feet will be given to existing small contractors,for which Rs 260 crore will be kept aside, said Gupta. The remaining money from Rs 1,000 crore,will be utilised for improving the area outside suburban railway stations such as Andheri,Kurla,Khar and Dadar,Gupta added. While corpoators have welcomed the move,there are some who are sceptical. BJP corporator Bhalchandra Shirsat said the BMC will be at loss monetarily if the big companies sublet the work to the same contractors who are working right now. How will the administration ensure that these so-called reputed firms do not subcontract the work to smaller contractors? The BMC will be fooled this way because overall we are spending double the amount we used to,but the quality of roads will eventually be the same, he said. Municipal Commissioner Subodh Kumar said strict conditions have been laid to ensure that important works are not sublet. Only 25 per cent work can be subcontracted to any two contractors. Work on the main carriageway of the road and on the stormwater drains cant be sublet, he said.
