Mayor adjourns meeting to review projects

KANPUR: Mayor Jagatveer Singh Drona adjourned the meeting held here on Monday to review water supply situation and progress of sewerage projects of Kanpur Nagar observing that Jal Nigam officials had come to attend the meeting without preparation.
The mayor got annoyed when Jal Nigam officials failed to reply to the queries of the working committee members, and provided incomplete and vague information to them.He fixed July 15 as the next date of the review meeting.
At present, Jal Nigam is executing water supply and sewer projects worth Rs 8.5 billion and Rs 5 billion respectively in the city. Both the projects should have been completed in 2012 but are still incomplete.
Project manager SK Gupta and a Jal Nigam official PC Shukla told the corporators that around 79.8 per cent work of potable water project was complete and the entire project would be completed by March 31, 2016. But the corporators, who were more aware of the facts, reprimanded the two officials for providing vague information.
Ashutosh Tripathi, a corporator, asked as to why a huge amount of Rs 270 crore was paid to Ramki Co. which has so far executed just 30 per cent work. On the other hand, the project manager claimed that since the company had completed most of the assigned work, therefore payment was made to it. The annoyed corporator then asked the project manager to produce the list of the work completed by the company. But, both the officials failed to provide the list. They also failed to give satisfactory reply when were asked about regular leakage detected while testing the newly laid pipeline.
Another corporator asked: "Even after laying of pipelines why water is not reaching the water tanks?. How much money has been spent on this project? Why the company could not complete the project whereas the contract was given to it several years back? Why the contractors are not being paid the old rates which were accepted by them during the contract?"
The two officials, facing the onslaught of the mayor and the corporators, kept mum. The mayor, after adjourning the meeting, directed the officials to come prepared with proper information in the next meeting.