Vigilance unearths graft in laying pipeline

May 23, 2014 09:54 am | Updated May 26, 2016 09:54 am IST - Kochi

The Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau on Thursday detected corruption in laying of water pipelines in Kochi. Certain officials of the Kerala Water Authority (KWA) allegedly allocated work of laying water pipelines along the Puthenpalam-Vyttila stretch without carrying out the tender process.

According to Vigilance officials, the work was allotted along with the pipeline shifting work for the Kochi Metro rail. “The work of shifting pipelines from Kadavanthra to Vyttila for the metro rail was awarded to a contractor after due process. But along with this work, KWA also forced the same contractor to carry out the pipe-laying work in the 336-metre stretch from Puthenpalam to Vyttila. The two works were carried out simultaneously, but were going to be billed separately,” said VACB deputy superintendent of police A.D. Balasubramanian.

VACB officials on Thursday dug up a portion of the Sahodaran Ayyappan Road to verify that the work had been carried out. Mr. Balasubramanian said KWA had also posted a tender notice for the completed work on May 19 this year. “The notice was posted only outside the office and not in newspapers,” he said. The issue came to light after the department detained a KWA executive engineer earlier this month on charge of accepting a bribe. Vigilance officials said the executive engineer and assistant executive engineer in charge of the work as well as the supervising engineer of the pipe-laying work would be held responsible for corruption.

A senior official of the KWA told The Hindu that the work of laying the extra 160 mm PVC pipe in the trench dug to lay the main distribution line from the new bridge to Vyttila junction was ordered following Chief Ministerial-level talks. The work had to be speeded up before May 31 and the KWA did not have time to call for a re-tender. The official said KWA had to persuade the contractor to lay the extra pipe before the trench was closed so as to avoid re-digging that would have cost not just time but would have inconvenienced the public too. Laying the extra smaller pipe was necessitated as the Water Authority discovered that there were more pipes underneath the mainline that needs to be relocated.

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