The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has to bear an additional financial burden of Rs 3.5 crore for the ongoing sewer work under the JNNURM scheme at the Samsul Hooda Road due to the fault of its own engineers and the contractor it had employed for the project.

In the first place, the design that the KMC engineers had prepared proved to be technically wrong when 30 per cent of the work had already been completed. Then it was found that the method the contractor was using for the Rs 30-crore underground sewer line project was also not right.

Now, the project is being planned afresh. According to a senior official of the finance and accounts department of the KMC, the project was initially stopped by the department “due to some discrepancies in the credentials of the contractor who had been awarded the contract”. But the planning and development department, which is executing the project, did not pay any heed.

According to KMC sources, the contractor who had been awarded the contract did not have any experience of executing an underground sewer-line laying project using trenchless method. This, despite the terms and conditions of the JNNURM scheme clearly stating that the contractor, who is awarded a project, must have an experience of executing at least one similar kind of a project.

An official of the planning and development department of the civic body said around 200 metres of Samsul Hooda Road were to be cleaned up under the project. As per the trenchless method, machines are used for cleaning up and desilting the sewer lines. “After the contractor told us that they have lost access of the sewer line, we found that several sewer lines from different areas converged in the area and there was a continuous flow of water. The contractor could not drain out the water from the other sewer lines,” said an engineer of the KMC.

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