Who dug it

But this may not be entirely true as last year the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) hiked the digging charges for the city from Rs 19 lakh to Rs 44 lakh per km. This put a spanner on many expansion projects,especially for the telecom sector in the city,and although only BSNL came forward publicly all telecom companies are opposed to the policy as made evident from the reduction in digging work undertaken by utilities since then.

According to V K Mahendra,Principal General manager,BSNL,Pune,the need of the hour is to put in place a dedicated agency for road maintenance. “Instead of making digging work – essential for the upkeep of the city – so prohibitively costly and then targeting only public sector utilities,the PMC should reduce the fee and there should be strict monitoring on the implementation of rule front so that it looks to levy the same charge from all who dig the road instead of targeting only the PSUs. We are willing to level the roads after digging if PMC is willing to delegate this work,” said Mahendra.

The BSNL has already said it cannot afford the new rates; it has ceased expansion and is now undertaking only maintenance work that is absolutely necessary. When public utilities say that they are not able to afford the digging fee of Rs 44 lakh per km,how is it that so many roads are still being dug?

“We suspect it is being done by private bodies illegally. It is going unchecked,as the PMC has no monitoring authority across the city to check if the person digging the roads has paid the fee or not. Many of these private bodies could also be ‘managing’ the higher authorities and digging roads without paying the entire amount,” said Vivek Velankar,convener of the Sajag Nagrik Manch,which has worked on road related issues.

“While the corporators of every ward take an active interest at the time of sanctioning the project,they do not oversee its implementation. That too is their duty,” Velankar said.

The other reason is that most of the digging work in the city is also primarily being commissioned by the PMC under the JNNURM scheme – obviously the PMC does not get penalised for digging up the city roads in such a haphazard way,causing inconvenience to many.

For over a year now,Sitaram Khade of Paud Road has seen contractors working on various stretches of the road,at times on footpaths or digging trenches for utility cables.

“It has just been one thing or the other,they are digging it up,laying bitumen,digging it up again,then laying concrete,then again digging some foot path to lay interlocking bricks. There are huge open trenches along the road now. With monsoons around the corner,we are worried that the rainwater will flood the buildings and the hutments along the sides because the roads are on a higher level,” said Khade.

Before JNNURM road projects,Pune had the Integrated Road Development Project (IRDP),which had proposed revamping of four roads — Shashtri Road,Kumtekar Road,Karve Road and Lahale Road — at a cost of Rs 20 crore. “This was in May 2005 and it has been abandoned. With the present state of JNNURM projects,we can conclude that changing the name of the scheme is not enough,PMC has to change the nature of its work,” Velankar said.

On May 16,several activists will mark the “non-completion” of Shashtri Road,four years after it was started by the PMC under the IRDP.