The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation it seems does not suffer from the ‘once bitten twice shy’ syndrome.
This could explain why the water supply and sewerage committee passed a proposal to allot contract for maintenance and repair of water pipelines to Accord Marketing and Services. The company, in 2006-07, was involved in malpractices after being allotted similar kind of work in the new west zone of AMC.
The committee passed a proposal for maintenance contract worth Rs53.22 lakh in three wards — Kali, Ranip and Chandlodia — of new west zone for a period of two years.It should be noted that Accord Marketing was favoured by the AMC during the 2006-07 tender though it was not the first lowest bidder.
However, it was given a chance after it agreed to work at the rates agreed by the first lowest bidder. The work was then equally distributed between the company and the original first lowest bidder, Shree Infracon Pvt Ltd.
Moreover, Accord had also failed to submit a duplicate copy of the tender.Shree Infracon Pvt Ltd had raised an objection to giving the contract to Accord but the civic body overruled it.
Later, many irregularities were found in the company's work and it was penalised by the civic body. Yet this time too it was given the contract in the same wards. This time around, the contractor quoted the labour cost at Rs300 per day compared to Rs400 per day last time.
Hasmukh Patel, chairman of water supply and sewerage committee, said that the civic body did not have the manpower to meet the maintenance work, so rate-based contractual work was a must.
It should be noted that AMC and Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority (Auda) have spent more than Rs420 crore to provide potable water to the citizens yet more money needs to be pumped into the area to address many of the citizens woes.
Earlier Auda had laid PVC pipelines, which was replaced with DI pipes by AMC as the plastic pipe lines could not withstand the water pressure.
"It is nothing but waste of people's money as AMC will have to shell out the moolah whether the maintenance is needed or not," said an AMC official. Patel said that the civic body has introduced certain new terms and conditions to curb malpractices.He said that maintenance of labour register will be made compulsory and labour will be deployed as per need and not in groups.
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