Delhi Lieutenant-Governor (L-G) Vinai Kumar Saxena has asked agencies involved in civil works to submit an action-taken report (ATR) of ongoing projects in the city by September 30.
According to the official statement released by the L-G’s office, Saxena also directed the agencies to thoroughly review the work procedures to improve quality, maintain financial probity and ensure their timely completion.
The L-G also directed officials to create a suitable deterrence mechanism, wherein the defaulters are identified, responsibilities fixed and exemplary action is taken in a time-bound manner to set the tone for efficient and smooth functioning.
“Saxena has been reviewing various ongoing projects of the Delhi Development Authority, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, and the New Delhi Municipal Council among others,” it read. He has observed that the projects are invariably exceeding the deadline resulting in cost escalations, it said.
"It is advised to reduce the number of tenders and contracts by floating a single tender for annual operation and maintenance of various similarly-placed projects.
This will not only reduce paperwork and time overruns but will also bring in economy, besides enabling better monitoring and securing quality output," the statement said.
In the interest of efficiency, this exercise should be undertaken expeditiously and an ATR should be forwarded to the L-G’s office, it said.
The L-G also said in many projects, the original financial scope according to the administrative approval invariably gets exceeded due to "poor planning, delay in execution and poor financial probity" resulting in Major Financial Accounting Irregularities (MAFI) or even CVC enquiry. The L-G also observed that in some projects due to routine planning and estimation, the administrative approvals and technical sanctions are given at much higher rates when compared to the tender accepted rates.
This avoidable inflation of administrative approval or technical sanction, invariably results in faulty budgetary allocation, thereby blocking limited public funds which otherwise could have been utilised for other projects, the statement said.
