'Road work does not come to me for audit'

By - Suhit Kelkar

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's roads department has not submitted
records of its work for audit for the past many years. Because of this, 60
per cent of the road work in the city is not audited at all, BMC's chief
auditor PC Pisolkar told DNA.

The records tell auditors whether road repair was properly done by the
contractors, whether the contractors were paid despite shoddy or incomplete
work, whether municipal officials oversaw the work, how often a particular
road was repaired and how soon after the work the road got damaged.
Auditors can use the records to pinpoint cases of misappropriation of funds
or bad work. The records are vital at this time, as work is about to begin
on a Rs250-crore road project.

Using the Right to Information Act, citizens can request records - called
history cards - for particular roads in their vicinity. A history card
contains a chronological record of work carried out on a particular road.
It is the duty of the roads department to submit the history card of every
road to the municipal auditor, who checks the use of municipal funds. Also,
each assistant municipal commissioner, who heads a ward office, and the
assistant engineer (road maintenance) of the ward are responsible for
keeping of the records. Despite repeated requests, complete records are not
submitted to the auditor. Hence, the public is also barred access to the
records.

The municipal auditor says he has a hunch that contractors often get paid
without them completing the work. "Contractors are supposed to spread a
layer of fine gravel on a completed road, which prolongs the road's life by
inhibiting the entry of water into the asphalt. Several contractors don't do
this work but are paid by conniving engineers."

He says such facts would emerge in a history card, or if it is found later
that the contractor had left the work incomplete, the card would prove that
the engineer had lied.


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