BMC must ensure high infra expense = quality work

Construction work of the Coastal Road project on at Napean Sea Road near Priyadarshini Park. File pic

Despite the pandemic bringing the city to a screeching halt and the economic landscape littered with losses, the BMC spent 39 per cent of the estimated capital expenditure in the 2020-2021 budget, which officials said was close to the amount spent in the last financial year in the same period.

The BMC spent heavily on infra like roads, bridges and specifically, the Coastal Road. On the latter especially, the BMC spent over Rs 1,100 crore, more than double it spent last year, on the same.

A number crunching report in this paper cited mammoth expenditure on infrastructure. Understandably, a chunk of this has been spent on health care, which is par for the course as the outbreak has ravaged the city.

The mammoth figures spent on huge infrastructure work, must justify the expense. When we talk justification, we mean that the work needs to be done with vision, projects have to be seen through in the defined time frame, as time wastage means mounting expense and it should be top notch to begin with.

Often, we have stories which have unfortunately become part of infra folklore now. This means a particular amount spent on some facility, only for it to fall apart. This could most probably be a road. Then, a contractor is blamed for abysmal work. And, then, he is blacklisted. Some kind of investigation begins. There will be different agencies passing the buck. The road is remade and redone, and the public thoroughly confused is trying to make sense of all this rigmarole.

The same can be said of footpaths and paver blocks. These are installed, then removed any number of times, then some other material is poured in… the story goes on. Let us see these huge sums give us the amenities they are actually allocated for.