Now, VMC sewage pumping facilities come under scanner

VADODARA: The dust has not settled on irregularities in road and storm water drain works and the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) is staring at a possibility of yet another scam.

This time around questions have been raised regarding the capacity of the sewage pumps used by contractors at a sewage pumping station (SPS).

The issue cropped up during a visit of the Dabhoi Road SPS by standing committee chairman Satish Patel and opposition leader Chandrakant Shrivastava. It came to light that instead of pumps with a capacity of 1,900 cubic meters per hour (CMH), pumps with capacity of 1,100 CMH were installed at the SPS.

According to the contract, the agency was to install three 1,900 CMH capacity pumps and three 1,100 CMH capacity pumps at the SPS. When the top functionaries came to check the pumps, they were told by personnel of the contractor that the pumps were of 1,900 CMH capacity but had been labelled wrongly.

Sources said that the contractor has also claimed that a third-party inspection of the SPS was also conducted and the pumps were found as per specifications. In wake of the contradictions, the civic body as decided to seek the help of an expert agency to ascertain the capacity of the pumps.

Shrivastava said that he had been raising the issue of irregularities in SPS since quite some time. “I spoke about them in the general board meetings too. This proves my point,” he said. Shrivastava had earlier exposed the fact that operators were missing at various SPS and in some cases the pumps there were not switched on or were not functioning.

Patel had recently exposed a scam of smaller diameter storm water drain pipelines being used in Navapura and work not being done on some stretches in the same area. Before the storm water drain scam, the VMC commissioner had ensured that irregularities did not take place in road surfacing contracts by seeking details of measurements of such works in the western parts of the city. It had come light that the estimates were prepared without taking measurements on site.