Source: Hueiyen News Service
Imphal, July 28 2009:
The objective of the programme for providing road connectivity to rural habitations in Manipur could not be achieved as targeted, report of the Public Accounts Committee-2008-09 tabled in the House of the Manipur Assembly observed.
The committee cited failure on the part of Manipur government to release funds on time and awarding the works under various schemes by the implementing agencies without competitive bidding as the reasons behind the non-achieve of the targets recommend avoiding awarding contract works without competitive bidding.
The Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) was launched in the state during 2000-01 with the objective of connecting by good all weather roads 27 large and 487 small rural habitations respectively by the end of the 2007 .
However, it could not make much headway till the end of 2004-04 because of the delays in releasing funds to be implementing units and finalization of tenders and ineffective monitoring.
When the committee sought reports from the concern rural development department responsible for the implementation of PMGSY admitted the non-achieving of the targets as irregular release of fund due to RBI restrictions, prevailing law and orders situation in the state, limited working season etc.
As many as 570 numbers of roads and 67 numbers of bridges were taken up under the BMS converted PMGSY phase.
Out of this 422 roads and 44 bridges have been completed and the phase was closed in August, 2005 as directed by the National Rural Road Development Agency (NRRDA) and the balance works now stand reverted to PWD.
Union ministry of Rural Development for implementation of PMGSY has cleared the project proposal to the tune of Rs 152.33 crores for 58 packages under PMGSY scheme phase-V during 2005-06 .
For the state of Manipur, rural development department is the nodal agency for implementation of PMGSY.
The department had no well established engineering wing to implement PMGSY works.
As such, state PWD inducted as PIU (Programme Implementation Unit) to the assist the DRDAs of the district concerns.
In the report of the committee, it also expressed dissatisfaction with the simple reply of the department (Rural Development) which stated that they had resorted to restricted tender for awarding the works because of their urgent nature and for this they have identified contractors on the basis of the pre-qualified applications.
"Awarding of works through restricted tender system has become a common practice adopted by most of the departments.
All the time on the pretext of law and order situation in the state, such practices were adopted thereby defeating the very objective of selection of contractors through open competitive bidding," the committee observed.