BMC Mumbai has Shortage of Engineers in the Roads Department
The BMC this monsoon faced a public outcry due to the shoddy state of the roads that have been pockmarked with potholes and bad surfaces. Shoddy pothole repairs were also repeatedly carried out. The corporation currently has a shortage of around 80 engineers in the roads department, which has a cadre of 400 to 450 road engineers. Not all these engineers have supervisory roles, and a few years back the auditing was carried out by the roads department staff.
N V Merani, chairman of the BMC-appointed Standing Technical Advisory Committee (STAC), said the move could bear fruit. “If it works, it could certainly change the way roads are being developed and constructed in the city,” he said. “The inadequacy and incompetency of the municipal engineers is visible in the way road works are being carried out by contractors.”
Merani added, “This was anyway one of our long-pending recommendations.” The BMC-appointed STAC had made 90 recommendations to improve and institutionalize civic road works. But many of these guidelines were never implemented. Appointing private supervisors would take care of the staff shortage in the BMC as well as minimize the impact of regular transfers from the roads department. Even when road staffers are trained, either by IIT or other experts in the field, they are invariably rotated every few years. At the behest of STAC, the auditing was later transferred to the municipal vigilance department. “Since then, supervision has improved a great deal internally, but with the new change we expect the system to become foolproof,” added Merani.
Fed up with its own engineering cadre’s inefficiency in monitoring road works carried out by various contractors, the BMC has decided to appoint private consultants to improve supervision of pothole repairs and road building and maintenance.The consultants will be appointed after inviting tenders and they will have to go around wards monitoring work on a daily basis. These supervisors, who are expected to be competent technical experts, will in turn be monitored by civic vigilance officials and third-party auditors.
Municipal commissioner Subodh Kumar has issued orders to the BMC roads department to appoint the consultants as early as possible. The consultants will be expected to monitor all civic road works from the time they are appointed. Presently, the BMC is expected to give a Rs 330-crore contract for new roads within the next fortnight and hundreds of pothole repairs remain to be done. It is not known if the consultants will monitor these works.
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