The Manipur Hill and Plain Contractors Association on Friday informed that the body will submit a memorandum to Union minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari to intervene and hand over National Highway contract works in Manipur over to local registered contractors.
Speaking to the media at Manipur Press Club, Imphal, vice president of the association Ningthoujam Kumar stated that such big projects were handed over to big private firms from outside due to the alleged inefficient work quality of local contractors.
“But the companies also cannot complete the projects on the scheduled timeline. Such biases in handing over contracts has kept the local contractors oppressed,” he said.
He alleged that the concerned departments involved in such projects still did not sanction any amount for their works and maintained that the ministers and higher ups sanctioned the amounts for whomsoever fell on their favours, even if the work was not completed.
“Under the BJP government, the majority of the highway projects have been handed over to NHIDCL under their 100-day plan but still no works have been completed till now,” he said.
He said that local contractors would be naturally disheartened to procure the work order when the contract profile for a project was set at Rs 100 crore. But if this was compromised to a reasonable rate, the local contractors could play a more assertive role and get the job done even faster, he added.
Meanwhile, he stated that handing out work orders before the due process of Land Acquisition was completed also led to more expenditure on the state government’s part.
“The state pays for all the hire charge of labours and machinery rented from outside,” he said. As such, he further stated that it was more reasonable to hand over such big projects to registered local contractors to reduce state cost and improve work efficiency.
