169 BMC engineers in trouble

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) administration has fired two more engineers, and demoted 23, after the phase two enquiry report into the road repair scam was submitted last week. The report found these two to have shown the highest level of dereliction of duty, and allowed contractors to carry out shoddy repair work.

BMC chief Ajoy Mehta had set up the inquiry committee, headed by Deputy Municipal Commissioner Ramesh Bambale and chief vigilance officer Rajendra Relkar, which submitted its final report last week. It looked into the 2015 scam regarding road repair work carried out in two phases – contracts worth Rs 350 crore were carried out in Phase I; while Rs 952 crore was spent in Phase II.

The Phase II inquiry report was based on inspection of 200 roadworks and 169 engineers have been issued a show cause notice.

Based on the report, six engineers face pension deduction as punishment and 138 engineers will not see any increase in salary for one to three years, depending on their role in the scam.

"I have not seen the Phase II report," said Sainath Rajadhyksha, General Secretary of the BMC Engineer Association, "But it seems that senior officials have been let off . Such large-scale corruption took place due to a problem in the civic body's functioning."

Collectively, based on the two reports, BMC has issued show-cause notice to 185 engineers, of which 180 have been found guilty. A total of six engineers have been sacked.

The enquiry found that contractors compromised on base and sub-bases layers of the road work, and that work on almost all 34 roads was less than 60 per cent of the expected average quality.

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Collectively, based on the two reports, BMC has issued show cause notice to 185 engineers, of which 180 have been found guilty. Six engineers have been sacked.