Potholed roads won't see repairs for two months

There will be no reprieve for commuters from negotiating potholed, uneven stretches across the City for the next two months as the defect liability period of contractors for all the major arterial roads has expired.

The Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), in charge of their maintenance now, will need another two months to implement the road repair project.

The defect liability period – which applies to a contractor – consists of at least one year of repairs and two years of maintenance, if required. In some cases, the period may go up to five years. According to officials, almost all the arterial roads, commissioned close to five years ago, have completed the period and are now transferred to the Palike for maintenance.

The Palike head office, however, recently delegated the maintenance of these roads to the joint/additional commissioners of its eight zones. Most of the zones are awaiting the commissioning of the projects under Tender SURE (Specification for Urban  Road Execution) that have been approved by the Karnataka government and are expected to be implemented in the next two months, sources said.

“The zonal officers who are entrusted with the responsibility appear to have been lax in maintaining the arterial roads. Most of the zones are waiting for the Tender SURE projects,” said a Palike official.

As many as 45 arterial roads are designated to be covered under the Rs 200-crore Tender SURE project that was planned in the current fiscal by the Palike and the State government in their budget proposals. The allocation, however, would not suffice even for 20 roads, senior Palike engineers said.

“Due to the quality control clauses inserted in the Tender SURE projects, we are looking only at big contractors who will be able to take up large-scale road projects. Most of these roads need to be concretised under the Tender SURE proposal. The funds may be sufficient for only 15 to 20 roads,” said the engineer.

The Palike officials said the detailed project reports for most of the Tender SURE roads have been prepared and tenders will be floated shortly. However, commuters will have to suffer till the list of Tender SURE roads is finalised.