Mumbai: BMC turns to VJTI, IIT-B experts for better roads; asks to perform quality checks before concretisation

Mumbai: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided to get material used for the construction of roads checked by the Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute (VJTI) and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, before using it for road concretisation, as a step towards ensuring that contractors construct quality roads.

This comes in the wake of the citizens posting pictures of pothole riddled roads on social media and criticising the civic body for the sub-standard work.

“We have decided to ask expert institutes such as VJTI and IIT Bombay to check the material or mixture to be used for the concrete road. If these agencies reject the samples, the contractor can't use that material for road concretization. This will help ensure that the roads are of good quality. We will also request them to pay random visits to construction site to monitor the quality,” a BMC official said.

“We will impose a heavy penalty if contractors use poor material and also if they do not meet deadlines," the official said.

In September, BMC had invited tenders worth Rs5,800 crore for road concretisation. However, there was poor response to this. On November 24, BMC has invited tenders worth Rs6, 079 crore for concretization of 400 km of roads. This has evoked interest of nine bidders.

The tender is for the concretization of 71 km of city roads, 70 km of roads in the eastern suburbs, and 275 km of roads in the western suburbs.

So far, BMC has concretized 984.4 km of roads.