Officials responsible for quality of roads

Officers and engineers of regional offices of the road ministry, NHAI and National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation (NHIDCL) will be made responsible for non-compliance in quality control measures and specifications in construction of road and bridges on national highways, according to a circular.

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) in its recent circular has said that such officers and engineers of regional offices of the ministry, NHAI and NHIDCL may face major or minor penalty in case of more than three instances of proven negligence of norms for supervision or failure of structure during construction or operation. "In order to prevent such violations of contracts requirements, competent authority in the ministry has decided that the officer-in-charge of the authority at site ...shall inspect the projects to ensure that approved construction methodology of work is being followed by the concessionaire/ contractor and authority's engineer/ independent engineer/ supervision consultant," it said. Presently, the authorities have been only penalising contractors, independent engineers and consultants supervising work for any failure.