Costly pothole cure: BBMP has to spend over Rs 1,000 on a 1 metre-square crater

After the ‘Fortuner-as-tipper’ exposé by The BengaluruLive, a fresh tender was called and AP-based firm has bagged the pothole-filling contract

BENGALURU:

After TheBengaluruLive’s exposé in May this year of the pothole-filling tender scam in which BBMP engineers had accepted a Fortuner car’s registration certificate as a ‘tipper’, the civic body was forced to reinvite tenders for the work. Recently, Chittoor (Andhra Pradesh)-based JMC Constructions Private Limited bagged the new tender to (hopefully) make Bengaluru a pothole-free city.

Also Read: Fortuner-turned-‘tipper’ scam: How did a one-year-old company become eligible for BBMP’s Rs 270-crore pothole-filling tender?

The contract has been awarded for three years, extendable for another two years depending on the service provided. The contractor will get his payments on the basis of potholes filled per km.

TheBengaluruLive reached out to an engineer to get a rough idea of how much BBMP would be spending on filling a 1 metre x 1 metre crater, and was informed that it would be around Rs 1,197.40 on a single crater of that size.

The example:
Cutting —1.0 x 4 x 68 = 272.0
Primer coat — 1.0 x 1.0 x 34 = 34.0
Wet Mix — 1.0 x 1.0 x 0.15 x 700 = 105.0
DBM — 1.0 x 1.0 x 0.05 x 28002.5 = 350.0
BC — 1.0 x 1.0 x 0.04 x 2.5 x 4364 = 436.4
Total — Rs 1,197.40

Thanks to substandard materials and poor road design, filling potholes has become a perennial task in Bengaluru city. Earlier, the work was assigned to MSV Construction but the company was axed after it failed to do the assigned work. In fact, even the Karnataka High Court had taken BBMP to task on the issue.

Engineers’ favouritism

This had forced BBMP to invite fresh tenders but its own engineers had sidestepped the tender eligibility rules and tried to favour Dhananjaya BS (Nikshep Infra Projects). That tender was scrapped after the TheBengaluruLive’s expose. The new work order to JMC Constructions was issued on August 19.

Read Here: Fortuner car turns ‘tipper’ to bag Rs 270-crore tender for pothole-filling in Bengaluru! 

BBMP chief’s guidelines on pothole filling:

While the Road Infrastructure department has been taking up development work on arterial and sub-arterial roads, the Project (Central zone) department is responsible for white- topping and Tender Sure road projects. Inevitably, due to a lack of coordination among these departments, work on fixing potholes has not been satisfactory. To remedy this situation, instructions have been given to fill potholes on all roads in the city as follows.

1. Create a task force of the concerned zonal chief engineers, department executive engineer, assistant executive engineer and ward engineer of all zones to fill potholes.
2. The executive engineers at the zonal level must list all the roads in their limits, including arterial and sub-arterial roads, and identify the potholes. Further, they should request the required amount of asphalt mix and take necessary measures to fill the potholes. The Road Infrastructure department and the executive engineer, Project (Central zone)/assistant executive engineer must coordinate among themselves to fill potholes.
3. The Road Infrastructure/executive engineer, Project (Central zone) should provide details of parts of the road where construction work is complete and defect-free to the concerned executive engineer. The executive engineer will inform the Road Infrastructure/Project (Central zone) and ensure that these parts of the road are immediately repaired if potholes appear.
4. Ward engineers must collect information on all roads in their ward limits. The information must contain details of ward roads that have been developed by the Road Infrastructure/Project (Central zone) or other departments, as well as details of roads under construction/defect-free roads. The ward engineers must make arrangements to fill potholes within their ward immediately.
5. The zonal level sub-divisional assistant executive engineer must coordinate with other departments to provide necessary details to the executive engineer of the department, and should oversee filling up potholes of roads in the respective ward limits.
6. The Executive engineer, Road Infrastructure, TEC department must supply asphalt mix as per the demand from the zonal executive engineer without any delay. The data of asphalt mix supplied daily from the hot mix plant to different zones must be submitted to the chief engineers of each zone.
7. The zonal chief engineers must oversee filling of potholes under their zones. They should coordinate with different departments and provide the necessary support. The data of potholes filled on roads in their zones must be submitted to the zonal commissioners every day.
8. The necessary information on filling potholes according to zones must be consolidated at the Chief Engineer’s office and daily information must be submitted to the BBMP Administrator and Chief Commissioner’s offices.

Read Here: Fortuner-turned-‘tipper’ scam: BBMP Administrator orders vigilance cell probe 

Read Here: Make pothole filling top priority: BBMP chief to officials

Go and Vote: Issued in Public Interest