Nellore: In the wake of complaints over quality of the cement roads being laid on a war-footing in place of roads dug up for underground drainage scheme, officials of the public health department have deployed quality control teams from various parts of the state.
The teams rejected payment for nearly 6,000 cubic meters of concrete work executed by several firms including, Mega Engineering, NCC and L&T among others after quality control checks.
With the general elections round the corner, Urban Development minister P. Narayana, who is all set to contest from Nellore city segment, is keen on expediting the road works before the end of the March as he can seek votes by claiming credit for the brand new roads. However, keeping a tab on quality of the road works, has become a Herculean task for the public health and civic body engineers, monitoring the works being executed by as many as 100 odd batches, belonging to a host of contract firms that are involved in the exercise in different parts of the city.
According to the engineers of public health department, 520 kms of road is being laid in Nellore city and rural assembly segments falling under Nellore Municipal Corporation limits.
Roads to a length of 90 km have been completed in Nellore urban area and 150 km in Nellore rural area so far.
The public health wing made it clear to the contractors that they would clear the bills only after they produce certificates from the quality control wing. Though Rs 150 crore was sanctioned for the roads, only Rs 80 crore has been released and the balance is kept on hold in view of quality issues.
An engineer of public health department has admitted that the quality of the road works is only to the extent of 70 to 80 per cent while attributing the fall in quality to excess mixing of water in the concrete.
He said that they are carrying out concrete slump test or slump cone test which would determine the workability or consistency of concrete mix prepared at the laboratory or the construction site during the progress of the work.
Concrete slump test is carried out from batch to batch to check the uniform quality of concrete during construction, he noted. He added that the contractors have become alert and are paying attention to quality after they rejected payment to 6,000 cubic meters, after a series of quality checks.
