Contractors to work 24/7 to prepare for monsoon by May 31

Mumbai To make sure that the pre-monsoon desilting works in Mumbai are completed on time, municipal commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal on Thursday said that this year, all the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC)-appointed contractors will work for 24 hours every day in two different shifts in order to achieve the target by May 31.

Chahal also said that this year, for the first time, the BMC has introduced an incentive-based payment, to ensure that the contractors finish their work on time.

On Thursday, Chahal visited four different locations in Mumbai- one each at the island city and western suburbs and two locations at eastern suburbs to check out the progress of the ongoing desilting works. Chahal’s move came after a delegation of former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) corporators submitted a complaint stating that the pre-monsoon desilting is not being carried out in a proper way in Mumbai.

“This time, we have instructed all the appointed contractors that they will have to deploy additional manpower and machinery on an immediate basis to be able to finish all the desilting works by May-end. I have orally given them a May 15 target today and I am very much confident that we will be able to achieve our target by that time,” Chahal told HT on Thursday.

“Also, this year we haven’t issued all the work-orders in one go as we have observed that there are certain contractors who delay finishing the project. We have asked the contractors to finish 50 per cent of the total work first and have said that only if we find their work to be satisfactory, then we will award them the remaining contract as an incentive or else we will appoint new contractors,” Chahal said.

Earlier on March 8, the term of municipal corporators in the BMC got over as a result of which, all the statutory committees got dissolved. Usually, all the proposals related to development works used to get cleared through the civic standing committee. At present, with the absence of these committees, these proposals are being cleared by the municipal commissioner who has been appointed as an administrator by the state government.

“Usually, the desilting works start by March 20-25 every year, due to the change in administrative scenario this year many of the proposals were not cleared by the committee and I had to clear it myself due to which we were able to start the work only from April 6, onwards,” Chahal said.

P Velrasu, additional municipal commissioner (AMC) (Projects) and in-charge of this project, said that the delay will not be a factor this year considering all the contractors have been asked to work in double shifts.

“Usually, we complete 75 per cent of the desilting works every year before monsoon and the remaining 25 per cent are carried out during the rains. So, when we say 105 or 110 per cent of the target is achieved, it is usually 80 or 85 per cent in general,” said Velrasu.

Earlier on Wednesday, the commissioner had also ordered the setting up of flying squads to monitor the ongoing desilting works. These squads will comprise engineers from various civic departments.

“The primary task of these squads will be to pass information to us about the day-to-day progress. The progress report will be monitored daily by the commissioner and all the AMCs,” Velrasu said.