BMC found that despite levying a fine of Rs4.50 lakh on contractors who have been sitting on road works over the last month, not one major road has been.
The next time someone insists that slapping fines is the best way to make people toe the line, throw out his/her rule book. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has found that despite levying a fine of Rs4.50 lakh on contractors who have been sitting on road works over the last month, not one major road has been built in the city.
A fine of Rs35.28 lakh was imposed on a cartel of three contractors alone — Relcon Infrastructure, KR construction and Valecha Engineering, which are responsible for road-building works in the western suburbs. In the eastern suburbs, a fine of around Rs2.95 lakh was slapped on Mahavir Infrastructure, Shantinath Roadways and RK Madhani Infrastructure. In the island city, Prakash Engineering, Bitcon India and Vitrag Construction were fined Rs9.34 lakh.
The BMC had in October awarded contracts of Rs575 crore to a consortium of nine contractors to build more than 30m-wide roads. But, civic officials said, work costing not more than 10% of the amount has been completed till date. "The work has started but is moving at a slow pace. Even the foundation of the road is not laid at any location. It will be difficult to meet the deadline. To avoid further delay, we are levying fines on contractors to expedite their work," said a senior civic official.
As per the BMC, seven out of nine road works in the eastern suburbs and 11 out of 13 in the island city have begun. Western suburbs, though, have got a better deal: all 14 road works have commenced.
As a token show of commencement of work, several contractors set up a chowki on the road and dug up a portion of the road. But, the work hasn’t moved an inch beyond that.
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