Flagging the issue of construction quality in highway projects executed with full government funding or EPC, Union road transport minister Nitin Gadkari asked the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and other wings of the highways ministry to take up more projects on Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode. In PPP projects, the contractors either recover their investment from toll or the highway agencies make the payments over years. This makes the private players more accountable for their quality of construction.
Gadkari said the quality of road construction is not satisfactory in contracts executed on the Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) mode by all highway agencies. “But the quality of work is better in the case of BOT (Build, Operate and Transfer) and Hybrid Annuity Model (HAM) projects,” he said while urging the agencies to expedite works. The minister said, “We are very impatient; it’s election year and we need to deliver fast.”
Earlier, Union road transport secretary Anurag Jain also raised the issue of construction quality as he said that the main reason for this is poor workmanship. “Why can’t we get the good quality work from contractors when we are paying them?” he asked. Jain urged the officials not to get into any blame game while pointing out that often officials put the blame on poor quality of the Detailed Project Reports (DPRs). “Who accepts the DPRs? It’s the project directors and senior officials. You must check the DPRs and must monitor the independent engineers…There are protocols for carrying out checks at laboratories set up by the contractors. If we check, there will be good quality work,” the secretary said.
