As we all know, road construction is the basic source of heavy corruption in the country. The recipients of this corruption later on in life find their lives wasted with this illicitly earned money. Honesty needs to be cultivated in our lives to ensure that other citizens of the country also benefit by better facilities from infrastructure development and not just some vultures who grab these funds and transfer them to some illicit account in Swiss banks etc..
The govt was planning to get public private partnerships in the project but to no avail. Which means the NHAI (National Highway Authority of India) will take up this project, giving it to major contractors, and they in turn to minor contractors and so on. This opens up terrific opportunities for corruption and waste of public money.
To make this process transparent and the disbursal and utilisation of funds more accountable, a few suggestions are being made here, hope the authorities listen to them.
1. Revise the terms of the contract, include the cost of maintenance and upkeep of the roads for five years as part of the contract terms.
2. Let there be an ombudsman ( a public spirited learned individual or professor from a reputed Institute ) in each state to check the quality and progress of construction.
3. Let the contractors give an undertaking that they will not pay any body either in government or outside any bribe to get undue favours in passing bills or inflating the bills etc...
4. After certification of worthiness of construction by the competent authority, let the payment to the contractor be made within a period of 48 hours.
5. Let there be a clause which states that PMP certified professional be included in the project if the contract amount is more than Rs. 100 crores.
6. Let the accounts and utilisation, disbursal of funds, names of contractors, status of each project etc be put up on a Govt website for the public to keep a watch on
The basic aim of this exercise is to see that public funds are utilised efficiently for common good and not private greed.
George Easaw
Bangalore.
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