Water supply project delayed, officials indulge in slugfest

The fate of the MCG’s long-awaited SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) project continues to hang in balance.

The fate of the MCG’s long-awaited SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) project continues to hang in balance.

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Though seven months have passed when the engineering department opened financial bids for the project — relating to the operation and maintenance of water supply in the old city — it is yet to get approval of the finance committee.

With the project getting delayed, both the engineering department and financial committee — headed by the municipal corporation mayor — are at loggerheads.

While the engineering department has allegedly accused the financial committee for delaying the approval, the latter has blamed the engineering department of wrong practices during the opening of financial bids on November 17 last year.

“The financial committee has sought an explanation from the engineering department about the entire procedure of financial bids in which A2Z was not the lowest bidder,” said Yashpal Batra, senior deputy mayor and member of the financial committee.

On the other hand, BS Singroha, chief engineer, MCG, said, “This is not true. If something wrong had happened, why didn’t the financial committee recall the fresh bids and delayed it for seven months.”

Meanwhile, a meeting to sort out the issue is likely to be held later this week.

Sources said the engineering department had produced the file before the finance committee four times for approval.

Only after getting the finance committee’s nod, the file will be forwarded to the head office in Chandigarh. Officials of the engineering department said under SCADA, both operation and maintenance would go from manual to automated mode.

SCADA is a software-based technology commonly used in various European countries.