Taking action against the shoddy construction in the ongoing mega concretisation road works, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has come down heavily on contractors in Mumbai. The BMC’s move came weeks after the civic authorities carried out an inspection of the ongoing road works taking place at Mankhurd, Chembur and Sandhurst Road in the eastern suburbs and island city.
The inspection was carried out by the civic authorities on March 20 and April 1, when a delegation of officials led by additional municipal commissioner (projects) inspected the ongoing works.
In order to check the quality of concrete that was being used for road construction works, the civic authorities carried out a slump test–which is an assessment of the cement and water content in the concrete. The slump readings are classified into three categories: low, medium and high.
For low slump, the concrete is considered to be moderately workable, medium slump denotes perfect composition, while high slump denotes higher water content than concrete which means that it may affect the durability of the road and the surface could get washed away easily. During their inspection at Mankhurd and Chembur, the civic officials found out that the observed readings were higher than usual. Meanwhile, during the inspection at Sandhurst Road area in the island city, the slump test readings were recorded to be very low.
Following this, the Ready Mix Concrete (RMC) vehicles that brought the concrete to the worksite were also sent back by the authorities and both contractors were asked to submit a written explanation on the issue. Issuing a statement, the BMC said that a penalty of Rs 20 lakh was imposed on both the contractors associated with the project, while the RMC plants were banned from supplying concrete to the civic administration for a period of six months.
“The explanations that were submitted by the contractor appointed at Mankhurd and Chembur were not satisfactory following which a penalty was imposed. While in their explanation, the second contractor (Sandhurst Road) said the incident occurred due to negligence, following which the civic administration imposed a penalty of Rs 20 lakh on the contractor while maintaining its stance of not compromising on quality,” said a statement issued by the civic authorities.
The BMC’s move also comes a day after Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde carried out an inspection of the ongoing road works. At present, out of Mumbai’s 2,050 km of roads, more than 500 km is dug up. The civic administration has set up a May 31 deadline for filling the already dug up roads to ensure that all the roads that have been taken up for concreting are completed before the monsoon season.
