News Detail

• To discipline the contractors, the HUDA administrator has decided to change the basic eligibility criteria for hiring them. From now onwards, only those contractors who have a minimum turnover of Rs 50 crore will be eligible for contracts pertaining to annual road repair and maintenance projects.The administrator, Praveen Kumar, has written to the Chief HUDA administrator, DPS Nagal about changing the eligibility criteria for the contactors. Asked about the reason for changing the rule, Kumar said: "This will weed out small players who are not competent enough to execute high quality work consistently. The city roads require top-class maintenance and repair work and for this, HUDA needs contractors with adequate technical expertise and manpower backup."
• For the civic agency, annual road maintenance is a big task because all major roads in different sectors is in a shambles. The city has over 550km of road length covering all the sectors falling under the HUDA estate. The annual budget of repair work and maintenance exceeds Rs 200 crore. HUDA depends on local contractors for all the work throughout the year. At present, the contract is awarded to the contractors quoting the lowest price and this results in shoddy work, delay in projects and poor quality of road maintenance.
• "All this needs to change urgently and for this, I have proposed that the eligibility criteria be altered. In addition to this, I am looking at the pricing and cost aspect of the work based on certain specifications of the roads in the sectors," said Kumar.The price slab for road maintenance is being worked out and the contractors have to work at the decided price with no scope of negotiation. Under the present system, the bidder quotes unviable prices for the work in tenders only to secure the contract. "This also results in delay in completion of the project and the quality of the work carried out is also poor," said Kumar.
• But HUDA's move hasn't gone down well with local contractors in the city who are upset about the changes in the eligibility clause. "This decision will benefit the rich contractors who anyway outsource the work to smaller contractors after taking big contracts, ," said a city based contractor, on condition of anonymity.

Source