‘Corruption root cause of low quality road works, leading to potholes’

Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai in September 2021 had said that ₹20,000 crore had been spent on city roads over the previous five years. Chief civic commissioner Tushar Giri Nath recently said the civic body closes an average of 30,000 potholes every year spending around ₹30 crore, an underestimate, as per sources in the civic body. The sad reality of the city roads is that the two statements don’t seem to be a paradox anymore. 

Poor quality of raw materials and unscientific work in laying roads are at the root cause of roads being pockmarked by potholes with every brief spell of rains, experts and those part of the civic body said.

“The root of the problem is low quality raw materials. For instance, we need to use an emulsion for the bitumen to stick to the layer of the road well. But in the city, most contractors use kerosene, which comes at a fraction of the emulsion price. The quality of the bitumen is also lower, contrary to tender specifications. So the bitumen layer is loose and vulnerable to develop potholes,” explained a former city BJP councillor N.R. Ramesh, an engineer himself. He said never have the civic officials conducted inspection of the bitumen plants by contractors to check for quality of raw materials. 

The third party inspection mechanism introduced to check this issue has also been severely compromised in the city, says Srikanth Channal, Chairman, Association of Consulting Civil Engineers, Bengaluru. “Presently, the same officials award contracts and get third party audit reports of their quality. The low quality of work and corruption is thus buried. Ideally, the third party audit has to report to the Urban Development Department directly,” he suggests. 

But, at the root of low quality work is evidently corruption. Ambikapathy, President, BBMP Contractors’ Association, said kickbacks for road work contracts has always been a reality and they had been protesting for the past one year over demands for these kickbacks reaching unprecedented 40% levels. “If a contractor is forced to pay such huge kickbacks and then he has to make some profit for himself, what remains to carry out the works is less than half of the tendered amount and in that the quality of works will obviously be hit,” he said, adding despite their open protests over the last one year, corruption had not reduced. “In fact, with assembly elections fast approaching, we only expect the demands to only go up,” he said. 

There are other issues as well: in most cases, the temperature at which the asphalting needs to be done (110-140 degrees) is not maintained and roads are not laid following Ministry of Road Transport and Highway norms. A senior traffic police official said the road engineering was not in speed to avoid water logging of roads. “In fact, work of closing potholes disrupts the road topography even further, causing potholes to reappear at the same spot.”

Mr. Ramesh said Tamil Nadu and many national highways had experimented with using plastic polymers with asphalt which have endured rains better without potholes and it was high time the city also adapted the technology.