Hyderabad: In its bid to expedite irrigation projects, the TS government has downsized the role of the Quality Control Cell in the irrigation department, thus putting the quality of works in question.The cell’s certification on the quality of works is mandatory before contractors’ bills are cleared.
The government has delegated the powers to executive engineers, who can recommend clearance of the bill, without the quality cell’s approval.The new rule will be applicable to all the new projects being taken up by the government such as Palamuru Ranga Reddy, Kaleshwaram etc. The new rule has led to fears that the official-contractor nexus will thrive again, a factor that had formed the basis for setting up the cell earlier.
Huge irregularities in payment of bills were detected when the previous Congress government undertook construction of several irrigation projects under the ‘Jalayagnam’ project, with contractors claiming bills for substandard works. Following this, the then government set up the quality control cell headed by chief engineer and comprising of superintendent engineers and executive engineers.
The cell used to conduct periodic inspections of irrigation projects, collect samples, send them to laboratories for testing and record the results in the placement register and recommend clearing of bills. Based on this, the engineer of respective project used to send bills to Pay & Accounts Officer for payment. However, this process took considerable time resulting in delayed clearing of bills which in turn delayed the projects.
Now, with Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao giving utmost priority to speedy completion of irrigation projects by spending Rs 25,000 crore every year, the government feels that quality cell would be a hindrance.
“On an average, we need to pay nearly Rs 3,000 crore per month to contractors. The works and bill payments have to go at the same pace to meet the project construction deadlines of irrigating one crore acres in the state. Any delay in bills would result in contractors stopping work, thus affecting the deadlines.
It is not possible to spend such a massive amount every month if we go by quality cell’s inspections and recommendations. For this reason, the government issued oral instructions to the irrigation department to pay bills as per recommendations made by executive engineers,” said an official in irrigation department.
