Nagaland Contractors’ & Suppliers’ Union (NCSU) has urged PWD to split work orders kilometre-wise while awarding contracts for road construction by reviewing the present criteria in the notice inviting tender (NIT).
In a representation to PWD (Road & Bridges) minister, NCSU president Pele Khezhie and general secretary John Kath said that while they appreciated chief minister Neiphiu Rio’s recent statement of floating open tenders in the coming weeks to build roads, they were concerned about the criteria laid down in NIT published in local dailies on October 2.
They added that the criteria laid down in NIT by the department were harsh, complicated and not applicable to local Class-1 registered contractors to qualify for the works.
NCSU pointed out that earlier PWD used to earlier split work orders kilometre-wise while awarding contracts for road construction so as to enable the local contractors to get work.
However, the present criteria in the NIT had put hurdles and hardly one or two local contractors would qualify for the works, while rest of the registered Class-1 contractors, including those from ENPO areas, would not get any work as per the advertisements published by the department, the union pointed out.
The union mentioned that work for four projects under SARDP Phase-1 were clubbed together into one package and allotted to M/s Mayatas & Gayatri in 2014.
Stating that despite its repeated demand before the Central and State governments to split the works job-wise and allot them to local contractors, the union regretted that its demand was not met, leading to the projects resulting in total failure with not a single road being completed till today.
In view of these facts and circumstances, NCSU urged PWD to review the present criteria in the NIT and split the work orders road-wise at the earliest in the interest of the local contractors.