Growing pressure of completing work even with acute manpower crunch, absence of experts to supervise construction and the responsibility to manage traffic et al.
All these taken together posed serious of problems for UP State Bridge Corporation officials while oveerseeing construction of the Varanasi flyover that collapsed on Tuesday leaving 18 dead and several injured.
Ironically, political pressure silenced the voice of the Corporation brass from calling spade a spade. As a result, they chose to silently ignore safety measures and somehow meet the dead line handed out.
Sources in the Corporation confirmed that about a decade back, hardly one or two Railway Over Bridges (ROB) were constructed in the state and the Corporation attained expertise in constructing bridges over rivers.
Also those bridges were constructed in isolated places where no traffic management was requiored and hence they did not need to master the skill of managing traffic during construction work.
In the present scenario, of the 183 ongoing construction projects undertaken by the Corporation, 83 are ROBs and 4 are Elevated corridors and only 96 bridges were over rivers.
Sources said that as these ROBs and elevated corridors were constructed in city areas to clear traffic congestion, so the work has to be carried out along with traffic management for which Corporation officials were not trained or hadfirst hand experience.
“The Corporation had no separate wings on traffic management. Officials and engineers were not subjected to any workshop to help understand the guidelines while taking work in congested areas,” said a Bridge Corporation official preferring anonymity.
“What is more, due to pressure of traffic and local public, the local administration and the government pressure us on completing the project at the earliest. This further burdens the Corporation officials and engineers and aggravate the situation,” he said.
The officials further informed, “In the last few years, to make development visible, successive regimes sanctioned ROBs. Hence the Corporation was burdened with work in which we are still learning on how to carry out work in congested areas.”
“Not only are the officers and engineers of the Corporation over burdened with work due to political pressure, they were also facing acute shortage of staff at present. Against the standard of posting three Junior Engineers at one bridge, there is only one JE to look after four bridges. Of the two posts of Additional MD (Civil), one post is lying vacant. Similarly, of the 8 posts of General Manager (Civil), five are vacant, of the 8 posts of Chief Project Manager (Civil), three are vacant. Besides, one sanctioned post of Chief Manager (Engineering) is also vacant, three posts of Deputy Project Manager (Civil) and 4 posts of Deputy Project Manager (Engineering) are vacant,” he pointed out.
“The list of vacant posts is endless. Of the 184 posts of Assistant Engineer (civil), 89 posts are vacant, of 56 posts of Assistant Engineer (Engineering), 30 are vacant, of the 272 posts of Junior Engineer (Civil), 157 are vacant and out of 130 posts of Junior Engineer (Engineering), 43 are vacant etc,” the official said.
“The shortage is as per the strength sanctioned more than ten years back in August 2017. From then on, the workload of the Corporation has grown at least 600 times but no review of required staff has been made despite repeated requests to the governmment,” he said.
During a Board Meeting In December, then Additional Chief Secretary (PWD) Sadakant assured that new appointments would start from January, 2018, but nothing has been done so far. Recently, PWD minister Keshav Prasad Maurya too claimed that all vacant posts will be filled soon but no move has been made in this regard.