Officers continue to shift responsibility on each other
DIQC Deptt lacks specialised engineers in the field
Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, Jan 23: Incredible it may sound but it is a fact that no action has been taken on the directives of the Lieutenant Governor regarding safety audit of 20 years old bridges in the length and breadth of Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir despite lapse of over two months.
Moreover, all the concerned officers of the Roads and Buildings Department are shifting responsibility on each other on one or the other pretext instead of coming out with a list of such bridges and fixing the time-frame for the completion of this vital task.
On November 20, 2019, the Lieutenant Governor Girish Chandra Murmu, while chairing a meeting of the Roads and Buildings Department at the Civil Secretariat, had issued directions for immediate safety audit and 100% checking of bridges constructed 20 years back.
In the presence of Advisor K K Sharma, Chief Secretary BVR Subrahmanyam and top brass of the Roads and Buildings Department, the Lieutenant Governor had further directed the officers for periodic inspection of iron/steel bridges besides laying stress on creation of earthquake resistant infrastructure.
However, despite lapse of over two months no action has been taken on the directions of the Lieutenant Governor, official sources told EXCELSIOR, adding “the intensity of non-serious approach can be gauged from the fact that even the lists of 20 years old bridges in Kashmir and Jammu provinces have not been prepared by the concerned authorities of the Roads and Buildings Department”.
“No doubt, it is not possible to conduct safety audit of 20 years old bridges in the length and breadth of Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir within a short span of two months but at least such bridges should have been identified till date and documents about their design collected from the different agencies”, sources said.
The shocking aspect is that all the concerned authorities are shifting responsibility on each other on one pretext or the other instead of specifying the reasons behind inordinate delay in acting upon the directives of the Lieutenant Governor.
When contacted, Development Commissioner Works said, “safety audit of 20 years old bridges is the responsibility of the Designs, Inspections and Quality Control (DIQC) Department and it is better to contact the Chief Engineer concerned”.
However, officers in the Designs, Inspections and Quality Control Department claimed that Road Safety Wing has been assigned the task and its team has almost completed the safety audit of the bridges in Kashmir province and would shortly submit report.
“The R&B Department Jammu has yet not furnished the list of 20 year old bridges to us as such no safety audit in respect of Jammu province could be conducted till date”, they further said.
When contacted, officers of the Road Safety Wing said, “we have not been formally requested either by the R&B Department or by the Designs, Inspections and Quality Control Department for conducting safety audit of the bridges as such the question of submitting findings in near future doesn’t arise”.
“How Road Safety Wing can conduct such a detailed exercise with little manpower at its disposal remains a million dollar question”, sources said while disclosing that there are only one Superintending Engineer and two Executive Engineers in the Road Safety Wing at present.
Moreover, the Designs, Inspections and Quality Control Department doesn’t have engineers having specialization in conducting safety audit of the bridges. “A number of times requests were made to the Government for strengthening this department with all the required manpower so as to achieve the objective behind establishment of this department several decades back but no serious attention has been paid towards the department till date”, sources said.
They disclosed that even no serious attention is being paid towards periodic inspection of iron/steel bridges across the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, which was also the explicit directive of the Lieutenant Governor.
“If such is the casual approach of the concerned authorities towards the directions of Lieutenant Governor what could be the fate of instructions from other quarters can be easily gauged”, sources said.
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