Bangalore: There was chaos in the council meeting on Monday when corporators cutting across party affiliations demanded that the contract given to American Road Technology (ART) to fill potholes and remove unauthorised hoardings should be cancelled.
Corporators, including major works committee chairman, B. Somashekar, complained about the functioning and quality of work of the much hyped Python-5000, a high-tech pothole filling machine.
In reply, the commissioner, M. Lakshminarayan, said three agencies (the technical advisory committee, an external and an internal agency) will be appointed to verify the quality of the potholes filled. Based on what the report, a decision will be taken on whether or not to terminate the contract.
Earlier, in the council meeting opposition leader in the BBMP council, R. Prakash, demanded that the Rs 17.37 crore pothole filling contract entrusted to ART was useless as the potholes filled were peeling off. The conventional method should be used for effective pothole filling, he said.
Somashekar said that using this technology was a waste of public money, which could be put to better use.
Byrasandra corporator N. Nagaraju said that the machine compresses the pothole like a paint brush and has poor adhesive properties.
As a result, the newly filled pothole gets worn out within days.
Yeshwantpur corporator Muniratna Naidu said that the machine cannot hold the required temperature of 130 degree Celsius for Indian weather conditions, and during winter it must reach at least 145 degree Celsius. He urged short term tenders to fix potholes at the earliest.
Former deputy mayor S. Harish demanded that action be initiated against officials who are conniving with advertisement agencies, incurring financial loss to the BBMP exchequer.
He demanded that all the 2,000 hoardings that are said to be unauthorised be removed at the earliest.
Replying to this, Lakshminarayan said that all the zonal joint commissioners have been directed to remove hoardings by engaging scrap dealers without any financial burden on BBMP.
If need be, money can be spent and the same can be recovered from the advertisement agencies which had displayed advertisements.
