The Union Rural Development (RD) Ministry has found several anomalies ranging from poor quality to delay in the road construction work being executed by its own PSU, National Project Construction Company (NPCC), under the Pradhan Mantri Gramin Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), in Bihar, West Bengal and Jharkhand.
The Ministry has taken seriously the fact that not only the government agency is sitting over projects for as long as six to nine years in many cases, but also awarded the works to a single contractor in some blocks. Moreover, the NPCC even ignored their irregularities in the works.
The shoddy job by NPCC in the three states was discussed threadbare in a meeting held recently under the chairmanship of RD Secretary Amarjeet Sinha and attended by representatives from the three States and NPCC besides the Ministry.
Unhappy at the negligence, Sinha has now asked the PSU to pull up its socks and reinforce staff position in the three States to expedite the work. He also instructed the agency to blacklist defaulting contractors and initiate legal action against them, said a senior official from the Ministry.
In West Bengal, it was found that out of the over 200 works, NPCC had completed only 83 and assured to complete another 59 by March 2017 and 48 others by June this year.
In Bihar, the NPCC was initially allotted work for 652 roads/bridges in the initial years of the PMGSY. The PSU completed 616 works even as 37 works terminated due to various reasons. The 37 terminated works were again cleared last year with additional cost of Rs41 crore, said the official.
He pointed out that among the 37 roads, nine works were more than nine years old.
Bihar Government officials alleged that even though Rs47 crore was released to NPCC for maintenance of 539 roads, utilisation certificate has been submitted so far for Rs33 crore only.
In Jharkhand too, the work performance was dismal. Out of the 937 road works allotted to NPCC, 490 are yet to be completed even after the lapse of 5-6 years since the award of contract. Officials from the Jharkhand Government complained that to facilitate working of NPCC it went out of way by revising the rates of works and bearing the excess costs incurred in the retendered works. Still, the NPCC did not expedite the works, causing financial burden on the State, they said.
In the case of retendered works, contractors were paid before the works but with no positive results. FIRs have been lodged against the defaulters in nine cases by the State Government. “But the NPCC too has not shown any interest or action,” the officials pointed out.
When contacted, AK Gupta GGM (NPCC), said steps were being taken to blacklist the defaulting contractors and expedite the road works.