The Times of India      17.12.2019  

Greater Chennai corporation forms new committee to review rates

 CHENNAI: In the face of allegations of corruption in fixing prices for material used in laying of roads and other infrastructure projects, Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) commissioner G Prakash has formed a committee of all chief engineers to streamline various rates fixed by the civic body.

The order for constituting the committee was issued last week.

This comes shortly after anti-corruption NGO Arappor Iyakkam raised a stink about how the rates of materials fixed by the corporation was not accurate and that it was helping in ‘unjust’ enrichment of contractors. To buttress their allegations, the NGO had provided RTI replies given by the buildings department of the corporation. Prakash denied the allegations in an official rejoinder.

Currently, the schedule of rates for material like sand, concrete and bricks is prepared by the works department and the buildings department. This is calculated based on basic rates given by the public works department (PWD) or the highways department every year.

The rates are then placed in the council for approval. Currently, the civic body does not have an elected council in place.

In his order, Prakash said this required streamlining due to the increase in size of the civic body and major infrastructure.

 “The process of arriving at schedule of rates by a single department requires further scrutiny to avoid miscalculations,” Prakash said in his order.

As a means towards this end, Prakash has ordered the formation of a committee to approve a schedule of rates. It should comprise all chief engineers and is headed by the principal chief engineer.

It will have a sub-committee consisting of engineers drawn from executive engineers of bridges, electrical, storm water drain, roads, works, mechanical, buildings and parks.

A meeting would have to be convened on the first Wednesday of every month. Departments which require modifications, corrections or technical decisions would have to request for a meeting to be convened.

“Any new item of work which requires fixing of rates including purchase and receipt of new materials would have to be placed before the committee,” the order said.

All records of the committee should be maintained properly, Prakash ordered.

Arappor Iyakkam’s convenor Jayaram Venkatesan said this order was a recognition of the problems that the NGO had been talking about for a while. “It is good that the corporation has come up with a broader committee,” Jayaram said. 

The Times of India        17.12.2017

CHENNAI: The city corporation has inched closer towards implementing a centralised control and monitoring system for the 7,077 feeder boxes and 2.8 lakh LED street lights connected in the city.

The civic body has received technical bids from service providers last week, after tenders were floated for setting up the system two months ago.

The project, if implemented, will help in better monitoring of feeder boxes even in remote locations and will help the civic body attend to faults immediately, thereby improving service, officials said. The tentative cost of the project is ₹48 crore, of which the civic body has been sanctioned ₹14.07 crore under the Nirbhaya fund.

The feeder pillar boxes are currently provided with automatic timer-based on/ off switches. The street lights too are switched on and turned off at scheduled timings. “But the functioning of these switching points have to be done manually. This system will help in monitoring of the switching points from one location,” an engineer with the electrical department said.

The engineer also pointed out that changes in the scheduling of on/off of the lights will have to be done directly at the feeder box only and due to frequent operation over a period of time, the timer loses accuracy.

“This is another reason why different set of street lights switch on and off at different timings. For instance, in some areas, street lights would not have switched on even after it gets dark while in some areas they are on before daylight fades,” a senior official with city corporation said. Further, the switch on/ off time for streetlights varies across the year, depending on the sunlight intensity.

To make these changes, workers will have to go to the feeder boxes. “By group monitoring, we ensure that all lights go on at the same time and do not have depend on a field worker for that,” the official added.

The system will also help the electrical department monitor faults in streetlights and attend to them before they are raised by the public. This group monitoring and control centre will be integrated with the command and control centre of the city corporation, which is expected to be up and running by January next year.