Corp censures its engineering wing for shoddy performance

Thiruvananthapuram: Engineering wing of the city corporation got a dressing down in the latest review meeting on plan expenditure as the local body strives hard to attain a respectable percentage in expenditure by the end of current fiscal. Mayor V K Prasanth reportedly came down hard at some of the engineering officials of EE (executive engineer) rank, who failed to attain even 20% in terms of completion of works by March. Some of the implementing officers of various projects, who failed to attain 50% in execution of works, also came in for censure.
It has been decided to slap memos on all erring officials. The ruling council has expressed deep dissent over the shoddiness displayed by engineering wing in execution of works. There were a few EEs who earned good remarks as well with their percentage showing way above 50.

Early in January, the corporation had issued memos to four engineers who recorded poor percentage in work execution. It had also pulled up the superintendent engineer after he had failed to turn up for district planning committee (DPC) meeting, where flaws in estimates were exposed. The erroneous estimates had even led to a face-off between contractors and engineers, as a set of contractors had quoted zero rates for some of the items just to prove how engineering wing was unnecessarily preparing estimates for some items with vested interests.

Palayam Rajan, chairman of town planning committee and S Pushpalatha, chairperson of works standing committee, also expressed displeasure in the review meeting held on Saturday. In one case, an assistant executive engineer had made an assistant engineer (AE) perform a task although it was not within the jurisdiction of the latter. The mayor reportedly warned the officials against delegating own work to subordinates.

The meeting also warned the engineering wing that liability of incomplete spill over works would be on the implementing official if they fail to execute projects before the deadline. Around 15% spill over works remain to be completed this fiscal. The officials have also been directed to issue part bills for works partially completed so that contractors can have sufficient resources to get remaining works done.