Coming down heavily on officials taking too much time for highway project clearances, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari today warned them against "sitting on files" and causing "unnecessary delays" and said the files should be cleared in three days.
"Why are you in love with files. Don't sit on files for so much time. There should be three days limit to dispose of a file," the Road Transport and Highways Minister said at an event here.
"Delays impact projects which is not acceptable and records are being prepared to check unnecessary delays by officials," he said at the MoU signing ceremony between Indian Academy of Highway Engineers (IAHE) and Project Management Institute (PMI).
At the same time, concerned over an alarmingly high number of road accidents which India witnesses, the Minister said the persons behind preparation of faulty project reports would be made responsible for those stretches which account for the highest number of road accidents.
The Minister said it is wrong to accuse drivers alone for every accident, the highest number of accidents take place due to faulty road engineering.
He asked official to ensure that international best practices are adopted while preparing detailed project report (DPRs) and stressed that to ensure quality construction, auditing will be a regular practice.
He said that the Centre has decided to use 10 per cent of the about Rs 9,000 crore central road fund to fix accident spots identified by the government.
Lamenting that there was lack of motivation and enthusiasm among government officials in accepting innovation he cited how at Haldia port use of a hidden channel had resulted in savings to the tune of Rs 250 crore per annum on dredging charges.
The minister said that the port was loss-making earlier and required a huge Rs 450 crore per annum on dredging charges only.
He said that the channel is being used by more than 100 ships and IIT Chennai has been asked to work in the sector of port related issues.
"Knowledge is power", he said and urged officials to turn use innovation, research and technology to enhance output.
The Minister said that works worth Rs 25 lakh crore were lined up in the highways sector.
A pact was signed between IAHE and PMI to foster globally recognised project management practices in road sector and to augment the abilities and skills of personnel from the Ministry, NHAI, NHIDCL, state PWDs and stakeholders.
India accounts for 5 lakh road accidents per annum in which 1.5 lakh people die and 3 lakh are crippled and the cost of these accidents is equivalent to about 3 per cnet of GDP.
"Therefore, in terms of both award and execution, the
NHAI is expected to miss the target by a wide margin," the ratings agency has said.
MoRTH planned to increase both awards and execution in FY2016-17 by 2.5 times from that of the FY2015-16 levels.
For NHAI, the targets are steep with a target execution of 8,000 km (21.92 km/day) and target awards at 15,000 kms.
In August 2016, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) had authorised the NHAI to monetise public funded National Highway projects which are operational and generating toll revenues for at least two years after the Commercial Operations Date through the Toll-Operate-Transfer (TOT) model.
Seventy-five operational national highway projects totalling 4,376 kms completed under public funding have been preliminarily identified for potential monetisation, using the TOT model.
