Bengaluru: In order to avoid inconvenience to the public due to the cutting of roads to lay cables, pipes and other utility works and failure to properly restore them, the BBMP is planning to setup a separate private agency to carry out road-cutting and re-laying works.
While civic bodies such as BBMP, BWSSB, BESCOM and other agencies do dig up roads and footpaths to carry out various infrastructural works, private players do so to lay Optical Fibre Cables (OFCs).
In the absence of a proper monitoring mechanism – the government and private agencies cut roads as and when they require and do not bother to restore it.
Though this plan setup a separate agency for cutting and relaying road, was mooted many years ago it was never implemented.
Various civic agencies cut roads and put the onus of relaying it on BBMP's head.
Even private players, who take permission to dig road on a certain stretch, produce the same permission order to illegally to cut roads at other places.
As per rule, permission for road cutting should not be granted for the stretches asphalted less than one year. But these rules are happily flouted by BBMP officials, who work hand in glove with the OFC mafia.
When K.J. George was the Bengaluru Development Minister he suggested that a separate agency to cut and relay roads be set up to do away with all the problems. The job of the agency will be to cut roads on behalf of the government and the private players and relay it after the work is completed.
For this the costs to be incurred for road cutting and relaying has be deposited to the agency. The idea was to improve transparency.
When Deccan Chonicle spoke to city Mayor Sampath Raj he maintained that the idea of setting up agency is being discussed and soon it will become a reality.
