Reputed’ firms don’t bid for BMC road projects….Stuti Shukla
Despite increasing the size of road contracts to three times the original size, the BMC failed to attract bigger ‘reputed’ infrastructure firms to undertake new road construction projects in the city. After extending the deadline for submitting tenders for roads contracts worth Rs 549 crore by over a month, no big infrastructure firm has come forward.
While smaller firms have been kept out of constructing roads more than 30 feet in width due to revised tender size and conditions, BMC’s bid to involve infrastructure firms in road construction to ensure good quality has failed.
Officials admitted the firms which were earlier constructing BMC roads have bid for nine contracts — one each for asphalt and two each for cement concrete roads in the city, eastern and western suburbs. While currently, a single road contract is not worth more than Rs 15-20 crore, the new tenders will be worth anything between Rs 50 and 75 crore.
A contractor, requesting anonymity, said large firms will never take up a contract worth Rs 75 crore. “The step has been taken to favour certain firms. Top officials know such big names will not take up the work of constructing roads,” he said.
An official from the roads department said one good thing that has come out of the exercise is filtering out of small ward-level local contractors whose work is often shoddy. “But the big names we were expecting have not bid. The only relatively bigger names are Mahavir Infrastructure, Relcon Infra Ltd, etc,” he said. BMC was hoping that firms such as L&T, Gammon, Simplex and HCC would come forward.
Chief engineer of the roads department Satish Badve said most of the contractors who bid in the past managed to meet the revised tender conditions. “Earlier, about 100 companies would bid, but the number has come down to 16 this time,” he said. Officials fear giving more quantity of work to less number of parties involves more risks and more chances of poorly laid roads.