Ghaziabad: Green Road Infrastructure Development Urban (CM-GRID) phase 2 and other works in Indirapuram and Vasundhara have been assigned to two contractors — Shri Ram Constructions and SS Contractors.On Tuesday, Sanjeev Tyagi, an office-bearer of GMC’s contractor association, said these two contractors have been working in the state for more than two decades and their records are “clean”. This comes days after the contractprs were pulled up by Ghaziabad Municipal Corporation (GMC).GMC officials said on Tuesday that the two contractors have 15 and 20 years of experience respectively.“Shri Ram Constructions is a Lucknow-based firm, which has been presently working in Balia, Gorakhpur, Mau and Gazipur, their expertise being road and sewer work and according to their profile, they recently carried out city beautification in Balia,” a GMC official told TOI.“SS Constructions has 20 years of experience in the state and at present have been awarded tenders in Lucknow, Shahjahanpur, Kanpur and their profile is similar: they deal in STP, road and drain work. There are no records that say , they faced any major punitive action or fine related to work. As far as delay is concerned, there have been delays but it is for the urban planning department and municipality concerned to ascertain that,” the official said.When asked about the delay in work, a representative of Shri Ram Constructions said, “There are a lot of practical difficulties that have led to the delay. First, from Feb we were given 15 months’ time to complete the work, but in reality about two to three months go into planning and preparing the design. In NCR, we face other issues — like in Ghaziabad, we had to stop work for about a month because of Kanwar Yatra; then GRAP equally affects work. Recent rain and a bitumen shortage added to our problems, as a result of which nearly four months of work was lost.”Getting NOCs from various departments is another big challenge and time-consuming, the representative added.GMC office-bearer Tyagi added, “The contractors are always at the receiving end, be it from officials, residents or the public. It is very easy to lay blame on them for any delay or poor quality of work and I don’t say that it is without reason, but not all contractors are the same. There is a process before contractors are engaged as they have to pass through a series of bids — technical and financial — and after a lot of scrutiny, work is awarded to them. Any contractor with a shady past is blacklisted, and in many cases, they are even penalised for delay or shoddy work. The system is very transparent.”
