‘Administrative infrastructure has to be improved’

Mr Raminder Singh Gujral, on Thursday joined the Department of Revenue as Secretary. Hours before relinquishing charge as the Secretary, Road Transport and Highways Ministry, he spoke to Business Line, on his achievements and regrets during his 11-month tenure. He also held additional charge of NHAI Chairman for six months. Excerpts:

What would you count as your key achievements?

When I joined, there were issues pertaining to transparency in award and bidding in NHAI. With implementation of annual pre-qualification system, the potential for mischief in bidding goes down by 90-95 per cent. Electronic financial bidding will lead to be an adjunct.

The standardisation in certain aspects has quietly been done. For standardisation of project costs, a committee has been formed under the Additional Secretary and Financial Advisor to vet all costs.

Norms for appraisal of projects have been formed and circulated to financial, technical consultants. They have to certify that they have followed these norms.

For instance, different consultants took different kind of views for different projects. On leakage in traffic, some consultant would say there is a 20 per cent leakage, some other would say 30 per cent in cars and 5 per cent in trucks….You can't have such variations because it leads to whims and fancies….

Second, speeding up of decision making process in NHAI was required, particularly on issues bothering concessionaires such as claims. For example, when I came, not a single projects' account had been closed!

Could you please explain?

For instance, a project would have started in the North-East in 2002, the contractor would have had a claim of some extra Rs 3 crore and the decision would be pending. In the last three months, I pushed for decisions to be taken on this issue.

Third, in the Ministry, road development in non-NHAI-related schemes have gone up. For instance, award of work in SARDP-NE and LWE has been significant in the last year.

In the Left Wing Extremist (LWE) areas, last year, we awarded about 3,600 km of projects compared to 160 km the previous year. In SARDP-NE, we awarded 1615 km of road development last year, compared to 188 km the previous year.

This year, we have set a target to award 2,000 km of highways under the SARDP-NE programme, and 1760 km in the LWE areas.

In the second phase, we have also floated Cabinet note to get an approval take up 5,840 km of road development in the LWE affected areas. This will be over and above a proposal to develop corridor of 2,300 km in the LWE area. For LWE projects, the cost would be an average of 1.45 crore a km; for North East 3.5 crore-4 crore/km.

Under NHAI, we have set a 7,300 km award target for this year. The Prime Minister wants us to take it to 7,500-8,000 km.

What are the jobs half-done?

In the Ministry, the administrative infrastructure has to be improved. Unfortunately, this was not done at Director General Road Development.

We have ensured many promotions of executive engineers (EE) to superintending engineers (SE); and superintending engineers to chief engineers (CE). But, there is a shortage of SEs and EEs now.

I feel some sort of lateral induction for short run on deputation basis can be done from the State Government, BROs, CPWDs, etc.

Road safety needs more attention. It requires to be built up over the next couple of years.

I wish the Motor Vehicle Amendment Bill could have been moved further….

What is the pressing requirement for the NH development programme?

Huge strengthening is required in NHAI, at all levels - from chairman, to members, to GM, DGMs.

You cannot have a chairman working on additional charge, vacant member positions.

Huge assets have been created, you need staff to do asset management and contract management. Awarding will go on simultaneously.

Under NHAI restructuring, there are requirement for cells road safety and contract management. The cells have been set up, CGMs have been recruited. But there are no support staff. How can the work be done without recruitment?

What are the key enablers that are lacking?

The environment to take quick decisions has to be developed….When an earlier member was removed on corruption charges, there was a reluctance to take decisions in NHAI.

Apart from strengthening in NHAI, land acquisition process has to be strengthened. My endeavour was to create a happy work environment both in the Ministry and NHAI. I tried to take the pressure on myself because under pressure, people cannot work. It is for others to say if I was successful.

Speedier Government approvals are required. After sending a project proposal from the Ministry, if getting the Cabinet Committee of Infrastructure nod takes six months, then we need to do something.

Is 20 km a day of highways doable?

Quitely, detailed project report (DPR) work for about 8,000 km is going on. This is to ensure that a pool of road projects are ready.

By end of this year, works on ground will be there for 22,000 km. By 2012-13, you can reach completion of 20 km a day.

Do you need to take steps to take care of public interest in highways?

Safeguarding of public interest is essential. The current minister is focused on this issue. Complaint registration and redressal requires more focus. Using Facebook to get feedback on NHAI has been successful. The attempt is to do the same for highways under LWE and SARDP-NE.

On monitoring highway project implementation….

The Minister wants the monitoring of highway work on satellite. To be able to monitor the work, you have to be able to differentiate the exact level of work on highways. This is not possible using Google Earth.

But, we are in touch with a Government agency to do this work. It has already successfully tested this work on the plains of Rajasthan. But, the trials are on to do the same in North East, where there is a cloud cover and the LWE affected areas.

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