The State Government had appointed an IAS officer in place of an engineer as Secretary to streamline the functioning of the Works Department, which is responsible for construction, repair and maintenance of buildings, roads, bridges and other related structures financed from the State and capital budget allocations.
But the move to appoint an IAS officer has so far been utterly disappointing and yielded no concrete result. Instead, the functioning of the department has gone from bad to worse. Reliable sources said that all the wings of the Works Department like e-procurement, Road and Buildings, World Bank projects, Research and Development and Quality Control, though having a number of experienced engineers and other officials, have virtually become defunct. These works have been outsourced to consulting agencies at huge costs to the State exchequer.
To improve the functioning of the department hordes of Additional Secretaries, Deputy Secretaries and Under Secretaries have been brought on deputation from the BDA and the BMC by the Secretary and have been rehabilitated to conceal the authorities shortcomings. It is no surprise that the consulting agencies are virtually dictating the terms and running the day today affairs of the department. The Engineer-in-Chief has raised many eyebrows for having his own team of consultants, who are being sanctioned crores of rupees from various divisions for preparing unnecessary Detailed Project Reports (DPRs). The Chief Minister’s vision to make the projects like the beautification of Grand Road, Puri Jagananth Temple, the Lingaraj Temple, Cuttack SCB Medical College Hospital and other projects world class has failed.
For an example, take the Lingaraj Temple beautification drive. The road from Samantrapur to the entrance of the temple speaks volumes how world class the road construction has been. The road is full of pot holes and the commuters are having great difficulty in negotiating it. This has raised question marks on the efficiency of the Roads Chief Engineer, who has spent his entire career in administration and has no field experience.
Besides, the Lingaraj Temple road, the R and B road from Cuttack, Puri, Khordha and Jatni connecting Bhubaneswar are in a very bad shape and developed huge potholes. The commuters have a nightmarish experience negotiating them despite the Semi Dense Bituminous Carpeting (SDBC). So, the concerned Chief Engineer has to depend on consultants for day- today activities.
So crores of rupees of false bills are being submitted in guise of road development, road widening, renewal coating SDBC and road furnishing in all the divisions across the State and crores of rupees is being siphoned off from the State exchequer by some persons ,who are having licence but are not professional contractors.