NEW DELHI: Cracking the whip on highway contractors and supervising engineers for poor quality work, the road transport ministry on Wednesday warned imposing “very large number of penalties” on such players. This comes in the light of recent instances of poor quality work and newly-built highways getting damaged, including in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.
Addressing the industry players at a conference organised by Highway Operators Association of India (HOAI), Union road transport secretary Giridhar Aramane said, “The eye for detail and the care for ensuring strict adherence to the quality standards is lacking. The ‘chalta hai’ and ‘jugaad’ kind of attitude even among the big concessionaires is causing worry. Now we are vexed, in the government, with this kind of attitude. So, what we are trying to do is to punish the concessionaires and independent engineers or authority engineers in a very severe fashion. You will definitely see a very large number of such penalties being imposed in the coming few months.”
He urged the industry to ensure quality work so that they get good dividend and commuters get the best facilities. Both Aramane and NHAI chairperson Alka Upadhyaya flagged the issue of “riding quiality” on Indian highway, which has been an irritant despite high scale of NH construction.
Aramane said the largest number of complaints and parliament questions heis ministry receives are related to the quality of roads. He said despite knowing well that a good job during construction helps in a big way as the need for maintenance is minimised, this is “not fully understood” by Indian highway developers.
The secretary said the ministry has ordered two investigations into the quality of work in two projects — one in Gujarat and other in Himachal Pradesh. “Of course, we are building 12,000 km of road a year and a few kilometers here and there are not the representative semples of our construction technology or quality. However, these samples, though typical they are, give the flavour of the quality consciousness of India developers to the outside world and also to our own politicians and the Parliament,” he said.
Aramne also pulled up the toll operators for deploying inefficient and faulty cameras at toll plazas, which results in slow processing of vehicles and queues at toll gates. He said, “Most of you are adopting very inefficient cameras, an inefficient system because of which the waiting time at toll gates is more than the desired 20-30 seconds. Many of the places these are consciously and purposefully being diabled and physical manual system is being put.”
He directed the companies to replace faulty and inefficient equipment for faster processing of vehicles.
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