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| Powerful thugs loot PWD deptt, leave several roads untouched in ex-minister's constituency | | | Syed Junaid Hashmi
ET Report
Jammu, Dec 25: Loot seems to have dominated the Roads and Buildings (R&B) Department in ex-R&B minister Abdul Majeed Wani's constituency where most of the road work is either incomplete or sub-standard material has been used in road construction.
Irony is that the road to the ex-PWD ministry's home village Bharth has not been macadamised and is in extremely bad shape. But the contractors who have been involved in the construction and macadimisation work during respective periods of this high profile PWD minister's village road have earned huge wealth and build palatial bungalows and hotels in Doda as well as in Jammu and Srinagar cities. Their wealth has increased by leaps and bounds.
But the roads remain in bad shape. If the sources are to be believed, these contractors had been engaged in road construction work by GVPKR, a Hyderabad based company. This new company, according to sources, sublette this work to local contractors who enjoyed patronage of both Congress big wigs and local goons of National Conference (NC). As per terms of the contract, these roads had to be completed within 18 months from the date of start of the project but even after prolonged delay, earthwork on around 13 percent of both had been completed on these roads.
This delay according to PWD engineers was primarily because of lack of commitment on the part of original contractors GVPKR. They said that they sent lot of communications to contractor for commencing the work at an early stage, but the contractor didn't respond. Instead, he sublet the work on Bhagwah-Dessa Road to local contractors and earth work was started carried out now on Km 3rd of 10 Km proposed road.
Pertinently, under the PMGSY norms, only 25 percent of a particular project can be subletted which is not the case in this project. According to the sources; no engineer, supervisor or worker of GVPKR ever came on the spot to review the ongoing work. What to talk coming to the site for inspection of the quality of work, GVPKR engineers have not been even visited Doda once to have a look at the construction work being carried out by local engineers.
Even the sub-contractor would prefer not to regularly visit construction site. PWD officials have in repeated communications informed the higher ups that inspite of their continuous calls to the GVPR, the company never placed their men on work, thus evading and escaping accountability and responsibility. The site engineer further narrated that it has become difficult for them to coordinate execution of work under such circumstances.
There is no work going on Bhaboor-Jijoot road. Only earth work of 2.5Kms out of the total length of proposed 15 Km of road has been carried out. The work has been stopped now without assigning any reason. This contract is also being executed by GVPKR which had subletted this work to a local contractor who did the earth work of small patch of proposed road. It is pertinent to mention here that there is no pending clearance from revenue/forest or any department.
This unprofessional attitude of contractors has not only wasted the time of government-which is as bad as stealing the money of the government but also kept the people of far-flung area aloof from necessary connectivity, thus perturbing them to be a part of growing economy of state. There are also several issues of land acquisition: The land of the villagers which is also their source of employment has been basic causality of a number of developmental projects including this one.
Amidst the vertical order of segregated houses on a lee side of a mountain (at around 7000 ft above sea level), the agriculture land/houses below the under construction road have been seriously damaged on Dessa-Bhagwa road. Few destroyed mud houses and small patches of farm land were also seen along the 2 Km patch of under construction Bhagwah-Dessa road. Villagers residing below under construction road are vulnerable to landslide during construction of road/rainy season. |
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