The BMC has prepared a master plan for city roads and it aims to build cement–concrete roads for the entire city by 2018 end. Even as the civic body aims to build the 560km-stretch in another five years, the fact that the roads department of the BMC has been able to complete only 530-km of city roads since 1989 suggests how mismanaged its administration is.
While last year the roads department was allocated Rs 1,500 crore, the BMC budgetary allotment of Rs 2,500 crore for road works in 2014-15 sounds like a mere announcement just ahead of an election year.
From the past experiences it is evident that BMC is capable of doing only 21km per year. The civic body is trying to hard to erase that image.
Civic chief Sitaram Kunte, while presenting city's financial plan for the next fiscal, proposed to increase the capital expenditure for road works from Rs 1,545.48 crore in 2013-14 by nearly Rs 1,000 crore. The civic body has been able to use only around 55 per cent of the funds allotted for road works to be carried out during 2013-14. The BMC doesn't undertake works during the four months of the monsoon and with the city set to vote for assembly polls, commissioning new works is likely to be affected also by model code of conduct, which lasts ideally for 45 days.
In 2013-14, the BMC allotted Rs 1,545.48 crore as capital expenditure for road works in 2013-14. This was revised to Rs 1,016.54. The roads department has used only around Rs 750 crore during the on-going fiscal. With nearly five weeks left for the current financial to end, officials expect the department to spend Rs 100 crore more.
At present, more than 1,000 roads across the city have been dug up and the hapless citizens can do nothing but curse the authorities for taking up roads repair work at the same time everywhere. Officials claim they have given out contracts for the main roads, and that smaller roads work have been requested by the corporators to use up their funds before the new financial year. Also most political parties want better roads in the city to claim credit before the May election. The result is utter chaos.
BMC road department officials claimed that it's unusual but true that all the requests for roads works have come up at the same time. "Work taken up by the central agencies was scheduled at different levels. While the process of tendering, bidding and entrusting contracts happened almost at the same time, it gives an impression that work is going on everywhere," said a senior official in the roads department.
Official also added that while they were already under pressure to complete repairing the major roads and completing the work of cementing scheduled roads in the city, eastern and western suburbs, they also received requests from corporators to take up works in their wards on an urgent basis.
Additional municipal commissioner SVR Srinivas admitted that the city is witnessing roads repair work at several places and citizens are facing a tough time. But the civic body wants to ensure they travel on better roads next year.
"Roads and gardens are the face of the city and we are ensuring that we keep them in best of state. In Mumbai road repairs work is like doing an open heart surgery on a person while he is running. We cannot afford to keep any road closed to undertake our job. The inconvenience, though temporary, is regretted. We are taking several measures to complete the work quickly," he added.
There are three reasons why one is suddenly finding all roads being taken up at the same time. They are fair working season, planned permission obtained well in time and mobilization of contracts and execution of work in time," said Srinivas, adding that even if one found that lot of work going on, kilometre-wise it's still less. In second phase we are taking up more roads repairs.
Box
Past experience in figures
Year Budget Estimate (in crore) Revised Estimate (in crore) Actual spending (in crore)
2008-09 1288.79 1175 900
2009-10 1321.35 1188.73 800
2010-11 1179.02 802.72 490
2011-12 892.96 682.35 342
2012-13 1812.47 1275.32 750
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