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Journalism of Courage
BMCs annual capital expenditure for road construction and resurfacing has barely kept pace with the rapidly rising number of vehicles on city roads. At present,there are over 1,100 vehicles on every km of city roads. However,figures show that since 2008-2009,BMCs roads department has recorded a spending deficit of 30 to 61 per cent of the budget estimate each year.
Additional municipal commissioner SVR Srinivas,who was given charge of roads department recently,said they were now looking at areas for road expansion. We are looking at constructing new roads. Many roads marked for construction in the Development Plan remain on paper. We will try constructing these roads,with special emphasis on the suburbs where the density of vehicles is less. We are also going to focus more on bridges. It may take some time,but we intend to carry this out to support the growing traffic, said Srinivas.
The civic data on actual capital expenditure also points to the delay in road improvement projects. The tenders for resurfacing roads in the eastern suburbs with concrete and asphalt,scheduled in the last fiscal year,are yet to be awarded. Similarly,the Marine Drive reconstruction plan,which was first proposed in 2011,and the purchase of a ground penetration radar (GPR) machine to aid road improvement works in the island city where the status of underground utilities is still unknown,are yet to take off.
This year,we hope to cross the Rs 1,000 crore-mark in budget utilisation. We will try to raise the length of annual road renewal works. Many such works have been pending for years, said Srinivas. This fiscals capital budget estimate is about Rs 2,000 crore and includes the remainder of last years budget.
BMC has,for the last 15 years at least,outsourced road works to the same contractors despite evidence of poor quality of work every monsoon. In the past two years,efforts were made to break this monopoly and woo bigger infrastructure firms. However,BMC remained silent this year. We will include more third party audits and consultants to see where the problem lies. Increasing the tender package failed to get the expected response. I have asked the road engineers to ensure that new road works must include all elements the carriageway,footpaths and median, said Srinivas.
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