Citizens’ group demands third-party audit of PMC tenders

Pune: Sajag Nagrik Manch, a citizens' group, on Friday demanded that the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) deploy a third party to assess the ‘base tender rates of civic projects'.In a letter to the standing committee and chairman, the group listed its demands. "The expert agency would scrutinise whether preliminary estimates were prepared correctly. Wherever such estimates were found to be inflated, an inquiry should be conducted against the concerned officers, followed by appropriate action," said Vivek Velankar, founder of the group.
The administration intends to adopt a ‘policy of rejecting bids that were places at rates significantly lower than the preliminary estimates' prepared by it. The rationale given was that these bids at 40–50% lower rates lead to substandard work. Velankar said this allowed contractors to comfortably bid lower rates, but under the new rule, they would no longer be able to do so – resulting in losses for the PMC and, by extension, for the citizens.As per PMC officials, the administration had taken the decision to set a lower limit for the tenders. Contractors have previously quoted over 40% below the minimum price. "It was found that some of these works, which were carried out by contractors at very low rates, had quality issues. The work quality was poor. So, the administration took a stand to restrict minimum bid rates," said a senior official of the PMC."The civic administration formed a committee to perform quality checks of the civic administration. It would form a standard operating process to check the works approved with lower rates," said Pavneet Kaur, additional commissioner of the PMC, in a circular.