Southern States - Tamil Nadu-Chennai   

Bandobust, videography for tender processing

By Karthik Subramanian

CHENNAI DEC. 17 . The Chennai Corporation administration today increased the police bandobust at the Ripon Buildings and introduced videography of tender processing in a bid to provide a safe atmosphere for contractors bidding for the agency's works.

Controversy has surrounded the processing of tenders in recent weeks.

Senior officials had decided to go in for a centralised tender processing system at the civic headquarters after allegations of favouritism and gross anomalies in the previous practice where the tenders used to be submitted at the zonal offices.

The move to bring the contractors to the Ripon Building was an initiative to make the system "transparent and fair".

But last Friday, several contractors were prevented from submitting their contract schedules by rowdy elements inside the civic headquarters defeating the new system.

The last date for the contracts for zone VI, where roads works to the tune of Rs. 2.5 crore are due for bidding, is tomorrow.

The Corporation has said the quality of road works would be monitored by a third party and would adhere to norms set by the Indian Road Congress and the Ministry of Road Transport.

Incomplete works

Patchwork in many parts of the vast zone VIII (Kodambakkam), however, was incomplete in several places as on Tuesday morning.

Residents expressed surprise that the arterial Rangarajapuram Main Road, which is a bus route, has not been repaired after power cables were laid three days ago. Vadhyar Thottam, connecting this road with Karnan Street, has also not been covered by patchwork, while Ratnammal Street has become uneven after recent repairs.

Several roads in United India Colony have been left with crude repairs, apparently because senior officers did not inspect the state of repairs.

The teams doing patchwork in this zone have not been uniformly using road rollers to smooth out the patches, resulting in crude work that has created several "unofficial speedbreakers" including those on the bus route road.

The zone has also become notorious for the numerous encroachments proliferating on the Rangarajapuram Main Road, made worse by the unrepaired road cuts, lack of maintenance of footpath and overflowing sewers.

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