BMC will float road tenders online in April

After much delay, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will finally float its tender online for roads worth Rs 500 crore by early next month, officials said.

Late last year, after receiving flak for the poor conditions of the road, the civic administration had decided to sanction an additional amount of Rs 500 crore for both construction of new roads and maintenance of existing ones, thereby making the total expenditure on roads to Rs 1,000 crore.

The phase wise tender for roads worth Rs 500 core was slated to be floated by mid- November 2010, but due to technical glitches the process did not take off. Officials back then had stated that the delay had been due to devising a foolproof method of conducting e- tendering, process which will ensure cent percent transparency.

"The state governmentappointed Standing Technical Advisory Committee (STAC) has already presented its recommendations on concretisation and maintenance of roads to the BMC and they have asked us to show our designs to the peer- committee, hence we have approached IIT, Mumbai, for the review," said Aseem Gupta, Additional Municipal Commissioner.

He further said the work on this regard is in full swing and tenders would be out by April 1, 2010. The BMC in its budget this year, had made allocation of Rs 500 crore and had proposed to continue the policy of concretizing, in order to solve the ever- increasing traffic problem and also to minimize the maintenance cost of the road.

The phase I of the for the cement- concrete works of road in 2011- 12 include concretization of about 10.23 km roads in City, about 12.50 km roads in Eastern Suburbs and about 7.50 km to Western Suburbs. The phase also includes asphalt roads of about 7.43 km in City, about 22.40 km in Eastern Suburbs and about 12 km in Western Suburbs.

Even as the BMC has increased the defect liability period from five years to 15 years for cement concrete roads, and from five years to 10 years for asphalt roads, to ensure that contractors maintain work quality, the delay of floating the tender, in all likelihood, will have an impact on the completion of road work before the monsoon this year.