BMC announces new system for awarding ward-level contracts

To ensure greater transparency and break the monopoly of contractors, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said on Tuesday, that it had decided to do away with the old system of appointing a fixed set of contractors for petty ward level civil work.

Each minor job at the ward level will now be handed out after floating tenders, following which a panel of contractors that will be appointed for each ward will bid for the work. The new system is expected to be implemented within a month.

Till now, one contractor used to be appointed for two electoral wards to carry out all minor civil works that came up such as maintaining gardens, civic hospitals, repairing streetlights, public toilets and so on.

HT had reported in its October 2 edition that the BMC had decided to scrap the old system and bring in transparency by tendering each work at the local ward level as and when it comes up.

Apart from this, the civic body will also appoint a third party auditor to conduct quality audit of work carried out at the ward level.

“There have been many complaints about the poor quality of civil work by contractors. With the new system and by assigning a third party auditor, there will be more transparency,” said Rahul Shewale, civic standing committee chairman.

Once it is approved by the civic standing committee and the ward committees, the new system is expected to fall in place in a month’s time.

The aim of the civic body us been to break the contractor-corporator-official nexus that led to large scale squandering of taxpayers’ money.