Sunday, May 11, 2003
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Tamil Nadu
By Our Special Correspondent
This was one among the findings by the Comptroller and Auditor-General, whose report for the year ended March 2002 was placed in the Assembly on Saturday. The Union Government released Rs. 269.30 crores to the State Rural Development department under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY); of this, it utilised only Rs. 38.16 crores up to May 2002. Under the Centrally-sponsored PMGSY, launched in August 2000, it was proposed to provide connectivity to all rural habitations by 2007 and the engineering wing of the Rural Development department implemented the scheme. During 2000-02, the Rural Roads wing of the Highways department spent about Rs. 133 crores for road connectivity in rural areas and its expenditure was reimbursed to the extent of 90 per cent from the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development at 12 per cent interest. "Had the entire expenditure been met from Government of India funds, the State would have saved Rs. 133.08 crores of its resources and also the interest liability of Rs.14.37 crores", the CAG report pointed out, adding that taking up rural road connectivity works under the State Plan and borrowing funds for this purpose were not prudent. Finding fault with the Highways department for poor planning, unnecessary widening of roads and wrong selection of works, the report said it incurred an "avoidable and wasteful" expenditure of Rs. 112.44 crores during the Ninth Plan period (1997-2002) on construction and maintenance of roads. As for the tendering system, a test-check revealed that in 15 contracts, for which the lowest bidders did not turn up for signing agreements after they were told about acceptance of tenders, the works were awarded on re-tender at an extra cost of Rs. 1.38 crores. For construction of 106 bridges, engaging of consultants unnecessarily resulted in an avoidable expenditure of about Rs. 2.2 crores. Under the same scheme, a perusal of two packages, comprising 14 bridge works, disclosed that there was an unintended benefit of Rs. 11.06 crores to the contractors because of inflation of the Bill of Quantities. The CAG also pointed out that 29 Highways department divisions received Rs. 88.61 crores as road-cut restoration charges from service departments but utilised Rs. 84.84 crores for meeting expenditure on other schemes during 1999-2002.
Least priority for roads maintenance
The report said the funds allocated for maintenance were not sufficient to provide for such works even once in 10-15 years. Consequently, improvement works at a high cost became inevitable when the roads were completely worn out. Despite the huge expenditure, the department had not achieved the objective of providing accident-free traffic and it had no plan to meet future requirements arising out of improved national highways and increased vehicular traffic. The vehicle population in the State went up from 31.82 lakhs in April 1997 to 51.62 lakhs in September 2001. There was also a rise in the number of road accidents from 42,197 (involving 47,609 persons) in 1996 to 48,923 (involving 62,706 persons) in 2000. The points were referred to the Government in August 2002 and till December no reply was received, the report said.
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