Pune Mayor asks administration to recover cost for road digging from contractor

Mayor Mukta Tilak on Tuesday instructed the administration to take action against all those who were involved in floating the tender for cement concrete road and digging the road, even before the tender was awarded. Mayor has also instructed the administration to recover the road digging cost in the Bhavani Peth ward office area where road was dug for laying concrete.

Mayor Tilak confirmed that the work on the road was started before tender was allotted. “It is wrong on the part of the contractor to start the work before getting the contract. Now, the Municipal commissioner has scrapped the tender process and the roads have had been dug for the cement concrete work and citizens of the locality have to suffer. The PMC would carry out tarring of this road again and will recover the cost from the concerned contractor and officials.” 

“Despite municipal commissioner’s instruction not to erect have cement concrete laid on roads less than 12 metres in width till 24x7 water supply work is completed, the Bhavani Peth ward office violated the circular and published the tender for laying five cement concentre roads”, said the Mayor. 

Municipal commissioner Kunal Kumar on Monday had assured to scrap all tenders floated. “I am going to cancel the tender process and issue a notice for the concerned ward officers,”  said Kunal Kumar.

As per Municipal commissioner’s order, the municipal administration on Tuesday issued written orders to cancel the tender process for all the five roads. 

The all-important circular 

By considering the proposed 24x7 water scheme in the city, municipal commissioner Kumar had issued the circular to the road department and all ward offices and had instructed them not to carry out any cement concrete work on roads lesser than 12 meters in width. The municipal commissioner had asked to take permission from Water department and technical committee before proposing such work. This circular was issued just a week before. Under 24x7 water scheme, PMC would need to dig 1700 Kms of road in the city to lay new water pipeline. 

The back story

Many officers from PMC accepted that as the financial year is coming to an end, many elected members are forcing the officers to publish the tender for cement concrete roads in their locality as they are worried about their funds which might lapse, if not used. Though it is clear that most of the roads would need to be dug in future for the water scheme, elected members are interested mainly in using up their funds.