NHAI invites bids to replace ex-armymen at toll plazas

Over 25,000 ex-servicemen operating and running toll plazas on national highways across the country may soon go jobless with the National Highways Authority of India....

Over 25,000 ex-servicemen operating and running toll plazas on national highways across the country may soon go jobless with the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) planning to award the operation of these collection booths to private players through competitive bidding process. The authority recently issued a circular through which it will invite bids from private players for running more than 150 toll plazas spread over the 70,000 km national highway network in the country.

An NHAI official said that competitive bids would be invited for all the existing toll plazas. Those located in J&K and the northeastern states will still be awarded to ex-servicemen. However,members of the Ex-servicemen Institution say there are hardly any toll plazas in those states as most roads are built there on budgetary support.

Ex-servicemen met defence minister A K Anthony in Delhi today,requesting for a rollback of the decision. If all 150 or so plazas go to private players who have the capacity to place highly competitive bids,over 25,000 people may actually be out of business in one go. While 15,000 are ex-servicemen from the various wings of the armed forces,another 10,000 are engaged in the associated work of logistics support for running these plazas.

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Currently,ex-servicemen are paid wages by the NHAI and an additional 14 per cent service charge on the total billing in the name of the person in charge. Even though the circular says that private players should have about 50 per cent of their employees as ex-servicemen,this does not seem feasible. The reason is that wages of ex-servicemen are almost double of civilians as per ministry of defence guidelines for ex-servicemen and no private player will be willing to take this additional burden, says a member of the association representing ex-servicemen.

According to the current rules,the person in charge of the toll is mandated to spend 8 hours at the booth for at least 26 days in a month.

The decision to award operation of toll booths to ex-servicemen was taken by the National democratic Alliance (NDA),which was later endorsed by a notification issued by the road transport and highways ministry in 2006.