Mumbai: Dadar TT repair work reassign to blacklisted contractor

Mumbai: The roads department of the civic body will finally start the most chaotic, congested Dadar TT junction repair work. According to the officials for the last three and half years, road work could not be started as the No Objection Certificate (NOC) from traffic department was pending.

Also to complete the work before the onset of monsoon, the civic body has given the work to Relcon Company who failed to carry out the work in the past three and half years’ time span. The officials are of the view, “If BMC will once again call a tender it will be a time-consuming process, therefore, the work has been re-assigned to the previously appointed contractor only, so the work will finish before monsoon.” Surprisingly Relcon Company had been blacklisted by BMC in the year 2016 after the company cheated BMC by doing shoddy roads repair work.

“This junction is considered as one of the busiest point therefore traffic cannot be diverted or can be stopped for an hour , due to this the work got delayed. However, now only during the night, repair works can be undertaken as it is a condition set by the Traffic Department, on what basis the permission has been granted,” said the officer. The officer further added, “Earlier along with junction repair work the storm water and drain department also wanted to replace old pipelines over there. However, later the department found out some other alternative, therefore only the junction repair work will be carried out.”

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Currently, the junction has paver blocks and is in bad condition. The paver blocks will be replaced with mastic asphalt material, a mixture of sand or limestone and will cost approximately Rs 10 crore to the BMC. The total area of the junction is of 9,000 square metre which will undergo major renovation and repair work.

Nikhil Desai one of the activist of Matunga who actively time and again raised the issue of pending Dadar TT junction repair work said,” BMC has given the work to a tainted contractor. The previous company work order lapsed in April 2017, still, BMC has extended the work order to benefit them it seems, which in itself is shocking.”

He also further pointed that it also raises doubt how the quality of work will be, when the contractor has been found using bad quality material and doing shoddy roads repair work earlier in the city. Also, as only three months are left for monsoon it seems difficult that they will complete the work before the set deadline.

Meanwhile, according to civic data most of the ongoing roads repair work are in eastern suburb compared to western suburb. There are 310 project roads and 11 junctions at eastern division were currently work is going on. While in the western suburb there are 257 project roads and 38 junctions. In addition, there are total 379 roads in priority 2 out of which 203 roads repair have already been completed and 116 are pending and expected to be complete by April end.