Bridge where no road exists and no bitumen for roads crying for blacktopping

INTEGRATED AUDIT OF ROADS & BRIDGES DEPARTMENT UNRAVELS THE MESS WITHIN
CARTELISATION OF TENDERS: 21,387 contractors, but no competitive bidding
GANGTOK: The Roads & Bridges Department got a Rs. 1.91 crore steel bridge on the road to Khedum village in North Sikkim approved by the North East Council in March 2005 so that the villagers could transport agricultural produce to markets at Chungthang and Mangan. This work, awarded at 25 per cent above the estimated cost was already running more than 3 years late when auditors from the Comptroller and Auditor General’s office visited the site in August 2010. It was 99 per cent complete [at an expenditure of Rs. 1.66 crore], but the villagers were still carrying agricultural and other essential commodities by head-load through a small log bridge.
Why?
The CAG Report for the year ended 31 March 2010, tabled in the Legislative Assembly on Tuesday, reveals that the Department did not establish road connectivity on both sides of the bridge. The bridge spans a stream at a spot where no one travels!
Closer to Gangtok, lies the Ranka-Luing-Burtuk road, for the blacktopping of which, the Department assessed a requirement of 760 drums of bitumen. The proposal was sanctioned in 2004-05. In October 2005, when the Department got around to acquiring the supply, it purchased only 576 drums. Of this, it issued only 130 drums to the Ranka-Luing-Burtuk road and diverted the rest to works undertaken in and around Gangtok. Five years down the line, the diversion has not been made good, and upgradation work on the Ranka-Burtuk stretch, originally scheduled for completion by July 2006, remains incomplete.
Revelations like these pepper the Integrated Audit of the Roads & Bridges Department [covering 5 years from 2005-06 to 2009-10] by the CAG office. The Sikkim Public Works [Roads & Bridges] Department, one may add here, is the oldest State Government Department. Its planning and financial handling, however, reflect a juvenile propensity for thrift and waywardness.

The lack of planning or even a vague realisation of its role in the State’s development is revealed by the Audit observation that the Department has neither incorporated the Government’s mission [for developmental goals] into its functioning, nor even formulated any Road Policy to date. It appears to revel in indiscriminate sanction of projects, as the two instances cited above attest, leading to a situation where it now [as on 31 March 2010] owes contractors a staggering Rs. 341.77 crores but has no financial resources to make the payments.
This liability could not have mounted for want of resources though, because this very Department has been consistently spending much lesser than its budget provision, surrendering as much as 51% of its allocation in 2007-08. Again, incomprehensibly, for a Department which remains unable to spend even its originally allocated budget, it routinely obtains more by way of supplementary grants every year, asking for and receiving Rs. 44.97 crore more in 2008-09 [after it had already been allotted Rs. 197.04 crore] and at the end of the year, spending only Rs. 185.07 crore.
In the absence of a master plan, the Department is also notorious for indiscriminate sanction of works and abandonments. The upgradation of the Ranka-Burtuk-Gangtok road for example, was bankrolled for Rs. 6.42 crore in January 2005. In November 2008, after the work had consumed Rs. 4.95 crore, it was stopped because a Rs. 116 crore alternate double-lane Gangtok byepass highway had been sanctioned for the same alignment.
Similarly, in 2008-09, seven works were launched under the “State Transport Infrastructure Development Fund”. None of these works were completed but next year’s budget saw no provision for continuation of the fund.
While delay in forest clearance and land acquisition are often cited as the reasons for delay in roa projects, the Audit reveals that in most cases, delay stem from defective Detailed Project Reports [on the basis of which projects are passed].
Then there is the maintenance, which does not appear too important for the Department its year-wise allocation for repairs and maintenance runs a graph which reads like a cardiogram ticker – Rs. 8.73 crore in 2005-06, Rs. 15.31 crore in 2006-07, down again to Rs. 7.52 crore in 2007-08, Rs. 5.58 crore in 2008-09 and the a minor twitch up to Rs. 7.77 crore in 2009-10. This, when road network is ever expanding and monsoon damages a routine affair. This misplaced priority is weird, given that repairs and maintenance are the only jobs the department does on its own, with the construction of roads and bridges awarded to contractors.
Now, contractors present a whole new dimension to the Integrated Audit, and, with the nexus which appears to have struck deep roots, explain why things are so tawdry at Roads & Bridges Department.
Contractors are registered in six categories with the Department, and as on 31 March 2010, Roads & Bridges alone had a phenomenal 21,387 contractors registered with it. This works out to one contractor for every 26 Sikkimese!
Before one begins thinking that this army of contractors would make the bidding for departmental works extremely competitive, the Audit reveals that 90 per cent of the tenders floated between 2005 to 2010 received only 3 bids each. Three, incidentally, is the minimum number of bids required to make a tender process valid, and the consistency with which this minimum condition was met, despite the huge number of contractors, clearly indicates, as the Audit also records, that “majority of the registered contractors were on-serious/ unqualified players who used their registration for cartelization of tenders and not for actual participation in the bids”. After all, even the top rung of contractors, the elite IAA category, has a pool of 74 registered contractors.
The “cartelization” leads to situation where the bidding process does not serve its purpose because there is no genuine competition and the State does not obtain economical rates. It also helps that there is no transparency in the invitation of tenders and wanton irregularities in cost analysis, estimation, award and execution of works.
Interestingly, when a test check was carried out on the credentials of 20 of the 74 IAA contractors, the audit discovered that 7 did not possess requisite tools and plants to be eligible for such registration, 6 had double registration – as individual contractors and also as partners or directors of different companies [in contravention of rules]; 5 had not executed the mandatory 3 works valuing over Rs. One crore in the past five years and so on.
Even as all these oversights and relaxations are allowed for contractors, the Department dips in often to divert funds from contingency expenses, 3% of the estimated cost of works set aside for meeting unforeseen/ incidental expenses arising during execution of work. A test check revealed that the Department diverted Rs. 38.03 lakhs from such works as carpeting of a road in rural East Sikkim, construction of bridges and protective works in Dzongu etc to pay for foreign travel by officials, purchase of vehicles and to meet hotel charges, helicopter fare and photography!
With such a slew of compromises made, it is hardly surprising that no attempt has been made to institutionalise quality control. It is another matter that even it wanted, it would not know how. After all, although the Department is primarily concerned with planning, designing, construction and maintenance of roads and bridges, it does not have a single officer who has done specialisation in road pavement design and construction or on structural designing of bridges.
Worryingly, the Department does even appear keen to make amends. Some years back, IIT Knpur and Construction Industry Development Council invited engineers to attend a training course on seismic design of bridges and construction and quality management of roads and bridges. The Department did not send anyone on the plea that it could not provide the course fee. This financial constraint did not, however, stop the Department from nominating two officers for an international study tour to Australia on the theme, “ADB’s Technical Assistance for development of road agencies in North Eastern States”. Soon after they returned, both officers were transferred out.
Even casual observers have commented on the proliferation of roads on Sikkim’s hills are ill-advised. Villagers have suffered substantially, complaining against damage to water sources and to fields and homes. The Department, however, has never conducted a study to assess the impact of construction of roads and bridges, either, the positive, socioeconomic benefits for connected areas, or, the negative impact on the land.
The Integrated Audit closes with recommendations for the department, offering a clear conclusion that “unless the Department woke up to its responsibilities of engendering an efficient and effective transportation and communication system in the State by streamlining it activities and improving its functioning, the fulfilment of the mission of the Government towards transforming Sikkim into a well governed and economically developed State comparable to the best in the country appeared grim”.