RAJ KUMAR
Ranchi, Aug.8: As many as 125 projects of the road construction department are incomplete in Jharkhand while the state spends more than Rs 2800 crore on it. The blocked amount is more than 50 percent of the estimated cost of the incomplete projects.
This is the highest figure in the department wise list of incomplete projects. The department is followed by the rural development department with 102 incomplete projects, water resource department with 84 incomplete projects, the drinking water and sanitation department with 42 incomplete projects and the building construction department with 21 incomplete projects.
A CAG report tabled in the Jharkhand Assembly recently reveals so.
The blockage of funds in incomplete projects not only exposes the poor quality of expenditure but also deprives the state of intended benefits for prolonged periods. Apart from this, it is also leading to extra burden in terms of servicing of the debt and interest liabilities on funds borrowed for implementation of the project. But officially no one is available to comment on it.
Repeated attempts to contact department secretary Sunil Kumar and engineer-in-chief Jay Prakash Singh to know the reason failed. However, contractors and department insiders threw some light on the reasons saying getting clearance from forest department and land acquisition besides mismanagement of available funds as reasons.
“The department should pay the fund to the agency according to pace of the work but it is hardly done and sometimes progressing work gets affected due to lack of fund while on many projects for which more than sufficient fund is provided got stuck on the issue of forest land clearance and delay in land acquisition,” a retired joint secretary said.
A civil contractor working for the department supported the fact saying poor respect for the words of experienced and honest officers of the department is also one of the reasons.
“To handle the issue of forest land clearance suggestion have been given several times by experienced officers to create a land bank to plant the saplings against the trees likely to be fell down for road construction projects but the same has not been done and not less the 50 percent project has got stuck up due to clearance from the forest department,” the civil contractors said.
The incomplete projects which have been considered in the CAG report began in between 2014 to 2020.
