Mumbai: BMC scraps tenders to concretise 400 km roads; cites poor response

A road in Borivli West being converted into cement concrete. Pic/Nimesh Dave

The BMC on Tuesday scrapped tenders floated for the conversion of 400 km of city roads into cement concrete, citing poor response from bidders. The civic body had first invited the tenders in the first week of August and pushed the deadline twice. However, it received only one or two bidders each for the five separate tenders floated for the work.

After intervention by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation had in late July announced a two-phase plan to convert all asphalt roads in the city into cement concrete within two and half years. Accordingly, the civic body on August 2 invited five tenders worth Rs 5,806 crore for the conversion of 400 km of roads.

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Of the five tenders, one was for 50 km of roads in the island city, one for 75 km in the eastern suburbs and three tenders covering a total of 275 km in the western suburbs. As per information given by the BMC, the tender for island city roads got only one bidder while the eastern suburbs tender got two bidders. Of the three tenders invited for western suburbs, one got responses from two bidders and the two others got one bidder each.

Officials said the poor response was due to the stringent conditions put by the BMC to ensure quality of work. A civic official said, "The BMC doesn't want to compromise on the quality of roads. The tenders will be re-invited after reassessing conditions and making changes in them." "In the new tenders, we will also include precast ducts, precast water mains and precast manholes to speed up the work and ensure quality of roads," said officials.

As per the conditions mentioned by the BMC in the tenders, joint ventures or sub-contracts are not allowed. Contractors need to have experience of working on state or national highways. It also stated that the machinery should be owned by contractors and workers should be on payroll for at least a year. BMC also put the defect liability period at 10 years, and 20 per cent of the payment is to be made after the same.