PWD - (i) Road Maintenance Inspection Website & (ii) Creating Centralize RTI Cell
Sanjeev Goyal
|
|
DWARKA FORUM Dwarka Ki Awaaz (Regn No. S-63070) (A Welfare Association of Residents & RWA's / CGHS Representatives of Dwarka Sub-City)
| |
|
Regd. Office: 720, Pocket-1, Sector-14, Dwarka, New Delhi - 110078 |
Phone No. 011-20514195 E-mail: dwark...@gmail.com | |
No. SKG/PWD/126 12 Apr 2015
Sh Satyender Jain, Minister PWD,
Delhi Government,
New Secretariate, Vikas Marg,
Delhi-110002. pwdhq...@gmail.com moh....@gov.in
Dear Sir,
Sub: Suggestion to improve Basic Functioning of PWD.
(i) Road Inspection: PWD is the prime road managing agency of Delhi, and execution of this job requires a constant filed visit of the areas under its purview. This job by no stretch of imagination can be done by sitting in the office. For better efficiency there are clear cut internal instructions within PWD to inspect every road twice a day. If this rule is followed sincerely many of the maintenance related issues won’t simply arise at all and prevent public from many inconveniences besides savings a lot of resources. However this inspection is happening on PAPERS only.
As per PWD version inspection is done but no inspection report is prepared – it actually a confirmation to the fact that only paper formalities are done and no actual inspection with ‘OPEN EYES’ is happening. There are abundant examples on roads spread across all over Delhi which proves that roads are not regularly inspected. Be it uprooted kerb stones/tiles, falling wires, potholes, obstructed footpaths, blocked zebra crossing - no one is there to check it. Many zebra crossings exists where you cannot cross the road, these are just painted blindly. Like-wise many footpaths remain obstructed and allowed to be encroached but there is no engineer to take timely action to remove the obstruction. Not only this, different wings of PWD staff itself is creating such blockage at many places, showing a patent dearth of common sense, Delhi is full of such examples.
One of the basic causes of non-attendance of day-to-day maintenance activities is they are not brought on record. While there can be a potholes on road but on record everything would be fine. Many of the officers may not be interested in small troublesome jobs. In a way the inspection status at present is under carpet and there is a need felt by PWD to bring transparency into it by putting it into public domain.
More or less this is the situation all over Delhi, in the absence of defined parameters & standard reporting format for road inspection it is left to the discretion, understanding & free will of the engineer concerned to note or ignore any point. Or even without carrying any inspection records can be generated. It is, therefore, suggested that an exclusive website be created by Delhi Govt. where it should be mandatory for ALL civic bodies to upload road inspection report on regular intervals. The frequency of road inspection should be fixed in a way that there should be at least 15 inspection of a road every month. The website should be dynamic and must provide several options to find out the inspection status & findings of any road in Delhi. The parameters of road inspection should be also be pre-defined to eliminate the understanding gap of different engineers which may be as below.
a) Whether any kerb stone/tile is uprooted on central verge or footpath,
b) Is there any low level footpath allowing vehicle to climb it?
c) Whether any pothole is visible - if yes where and about what size?
d) Is any patch on road is about to convert into pothole?
e) Is any portion of footpath/road caved in?
f) Is there any open man-hole?
g) Is there any falling pole, railing, wire, overhead sign board, tree branch, dead animal lying on road etc?
h) Is there any obstruction on footpath creating problem for pedestrians?
i) Is there any dug up space on footpath or road inadequately barricaded or lying unattended for many days?
j) Is there any unpainted zebra crossing or speed-breaker?
k) Is there any encroachment on road or footpath?
l) Is entry & exit points of footpath have appropriate poles fixed so as to prevent climbing of vehicles on it?
m) Is there any water logging, construction material, debris, damaged vehicle or any other kind of material lying on road?
n) Is there any damage to any kind of street furniture?
o) Any other issue, as per common sense of concerned field staff,
Operation of such website can bring a sea change in maintenance of all Delhi roads and bring much needed transparency. At present all the information is hidden and field engineers are just not reporting these anomalies and enjoying at the cost of causing inconvenience to society at large. Even, due to multiplicity of authorities, there is no single platform to assimilate & disseminate road related information. It is suggested PWD, which is managing most road space in Delhi, to pioneer the show by creating such website where other civic bodies can join later on.
(ii) Mis-handling of RTI: PWD is a large organization handling thousands of kilometers of road network in Delhi but there is no internal system to handle RTI applications. Despite there being more than a dozen PIO, there is no centralized cell to handle the cases. It is extremely unfortunate that in PWD no one knows who handles what and even for pointed queries the application is transferred to all the PIOs leading to a huge waste of manpower & office stationery. The applicant first get a dozen transfer letter and thereafter gets a dozen letters stating that the issue does not pertain to them. Ultimately confusion is created and applicant is left in lurch and is not able to ascertain who is the actual PIO? Not even this, the appeal is also transferred to many officers creating a total dark. When Central Govt., which is such a large body, is able to maintain online application there is no reason why should PWD leg behind. Even, before trifurcation, MCD had efficiently functioning online RTI portal, leading to significant internal savings of time & stationery besides ensuring timely provision of application. It seems that PWD is purposefully not making any central cell for handling RTI applications, so that ‘confusion’ should prevail.
In view of above request you to instruct time bound instruction for launch of online RTI portal in PWD.
Yours faithfully,
(S K Goyal)
Secretary – Dwarka Forum
D-103, Shivam Apartment,
Plot-14, Sector-12, Dwarka,
New Delhi-110078. cwa...@gmail.com
Note: (i) All the replies to this must contain the letter no. SKG/PWD/126 as reference.
Sudha Iyer
Sent from my iPhone
--
Membership Application- Please visit...
http://www.dwarkaforum.org/self-support/
We are on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Dwarkaforum
DWARKA FORUM (Regd) www.dwarkaforum.org
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "DWARKA FORUM (Regd)" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to dwarka-residen...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
<PWD - Barar Square 20150511_213329.jpg>
Arun Banerjee
Sanjeev Goyal
|
|
DWARKA FORUM Dwarka Ki Awaaz (Regn No. S-63070) (A Welfare Association of Residents & RWA's / CGHS Representatives of Dwarka Sub-City)
|
|
|
Regd. Office: 720, Pocket-1, Sector-14, Dwarka, New Delhi - 110078 |
Phone No. 011-20514195 E-mail: dwark...@gmail.com |
|
No. SKG/PWD/134 2 Sep 2015
Sh Satyender Jain, Minister PWD,
Delhi Government,
New Secretariate, Vikas Marg,
Delhi-110002. moh....@gov.in
Dear Sir,
Sub: Suggestion to improve Basic Functioning of PWD.
Ref: SKG/PWD/126 dated 12 April 2015.
(A) The prime job of PWD is to construct & maintain civil structures of society. To achieve his objective regular inspection is must and without it no timely & effective maintenance can be done. However, to a great surprise no such inspection is carried out by PWD ‘on record’. Despite an internal instruction to carry out road inspection twice a day morning & evening no such actual visit is happening. So many open proofs scattered all over Delhi roads is a confirmation to this. We had vide our above referred letter (appended for ready reference) attracted your attention towards this serious lapse for rectification. Non-maintenance of any road inspection record is actually a shield being used to protect inefficiency & corruption.
Despite the fact that what we are demanding this very basic & obvious requirement there is no progress in the matter. In response we only received a letter in May 2015 from:
Suprintending Engineer, Circle M-14, PWD (GOD),
Brar Square, Ring Road, Delhi-110010. sepwdd...@gmail.com
Quoted reference number (1) 14(2)M-14/PWD/911 dated 1 May 2015 and (2) VIP PWD/2015/04/VIP/728.
The letter advised that matter has been forwarded to field formation for taking action as suggested.
As a follow up action we sent a reminder letter to know the status of issue vide our letter No. SKG/PWD/132 dated 09 Aug 2015 but since there is no response.
The hesitation of PWD in maintaining road inspection reports is not understood. PWD is considered an elite department run by highly qualified engineers, supposed to set example by leading the show but they themselves are behaving dubiously. How they would set precedent for DDA & other municipalities to follow?
Without any maintenance report there can be no performance measurement & responsibilities fixed, perhaps to avoid this only they are shrinking from the task of maintaining road related records.
We highlight a few live examples to prove our point:
(i) The new flyover on Outer Ring Road at Muniraka & Africa Avenue were inaugurated during CWG in 2010. Right from the first day both of these flyovers suffered serious problem of cave in roads due to hollow base. The problem increased but no one in PWD cared because officially everything was OK and in the absence of road inspection report no one could have record that new roads are caving in frequently. This evidently seems to be a case of corruption where top surface was laid in a haste without properly setting the base. When dimension of problem increased and it became difficult to hide it, a new mastic carpeting surface was laid with a cost of more than Rs.4 crores. So imagine a new mastic carpeting on a new concrete surface within 2 & ½ years of construction? While claims are made that concrete surface live for 20 years but here it was rendered useless within less than 3 years. Not only this, the new mastic carpeting also started eroding as well as started cave in at several places. And now you can yourself examine on large stretches there is no carpeting visible, all eroded. While the standard life of normal carpeting is 5 years the life of costly mastic carpeting is supposed to be higher. All this is happening because there are no road inspection report is generated and put in public domain.
(ii) PWD spends crores on construction & maintenance of footpaths. All over Delhi during CWG games, in order to increase the tender value, PWD constructed large size sig boards and fixed on footpaths and blocked them for pedestrians’ movement. It was evidently a foolish act, other Govt agencies also joined the party. DTC/Transport Deptt also fixed thousands of such boards all over Delhi in total violation of UTTIPEC guidelines. But PWD engineers kept on sleeping. Even after dozens of our letter PWD engineers are not moving and only a few of such boards have been removed and thousands such boards are still standing in the middle of a footpath defying the basic purpose of it. All this is happening as Supervising Engineers have grossly failed in guiding field staff about how to carry a road inspection and what to do? (We therefore have provided a list of activity to be carried in road inspection?)
(iii) In the absence of any road inspection the incidents of encroachment are increasing. The whole stretch from IIT Gate to Zia Sarai is a live example of it.
(iv) In the absence of road inspection footpath remain dug up for months and there is no one to object. In official records everything remains good perfect.
I view of above, we strongly demand that proper road maintenance records be generated and put in an online manner in public purview. In the absence of any record everything in OK in official record because no record of potholes and other jobs is generated. Kindly note that we are not demanding any increased paper work or elaborate reports, the brief reports can be punched on site itself with the help of hand hold equipment like the one used by traffic police for issuing challans.
(B) The other issue of online RTI raised in our letter is also gathering dust as no information is provided if anything has been done on this front. It is surprising that Government of India which is much bigger organization than PWD has been able to implement online RTI facility but PWD is lagging behind drastically. Why?
We request that time bound instruction be issued for bringing above 2 reforms in PWD. On adoption this will ultimately improve reliability & efficiency of PWD.
Expecting early response.
Thanks
Yours faithfully,
(S K Goyal)
Secretary – Dwarka Forum
D-103, Shivam Apartment,
Plot-14, Sector-12, Dwarka,
New Delhi-110078. cwa...@gmail.com
Copy to: (i) Engineer in Chief PWD Head Quarter - pwdhq...@gmail.com with a request to take time bound action plan for both the above demands.
(ii) Times of India Neha.lal...@timesgroup.com with a request to high light the problem through newspaper reports.
(iii) Sh Arvind Kejariwal, Chief Minister cmd...@nic.in 3rd Level, A Wing, Delhi Secretariat, I P Estate, Delhi-110002 with a request to order implementation of above suggestion with reference to his poll promises to bring greater transparency & accountability in Govt. Department.
(iv) Suprintending Engineer, Circle M-14, PWD (GOD), sepwdd...@gmail.com
DWARKA FORUM Dwarka Ki Awaaz
(Regn No. S-63070)
(A Welfare Association of Residents & RWA's / CGHS Representatives of Dwarka Sub-City)
Regd. Office:
720, Pocket-1, Sector-14,
Dwarka, New Delhi - 110078
Phone No. 011-20514195
E-mail: dwark...@gmail.com
No. SKG/PWD/132 09 Aug 2015
Suprintending Engineer,
Circle M-14, PWD (GOD),
Brar Square, Ring Road
Delhi-110010. sepwdd...@gmail.com
Ref: (1) 14(2)M-14/PWD/911 dated 1 May 2015
Ref: (2) VIP PWD/2015/04/VIP/728.
Reg: Suggestion to improve basic functioning of PWD.
Sir,
Refer your letter no. 14(2)M-14/PWD/911 dated 1 May 2015. Informing that matter has been forwarded to field formation for taking action as suggested. You are hereby requested to provide latest status of such actions. These actions are very important to address some basic flaws in basic day-to-day working of PWD and if addressed properly would finally reduce the workload.
Expecting early response.
Thanks
Yours faithfully,
(S K Goyal)
Secretary – Dwarka Forum
D-103, Shivam Apartment,
Plot-14, Sector-12, Dwarka,
New Delhi-110078. cwa...@gmail.com
Copy to: (i) Sh Satyender Jain, Minister PWD, Delhi Government, New Secretariate, Vikas Marg,
Delhi-110002. moh....@gov.in
(ii) pwdhq...@gmail.com