National Highway roads social audit has no legal sanctity

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Days after LDF government came out with a social audit report on PWD and NH roads, officials and contractors vouch that it has no legal standing. They claim that the reasons for road failure cannot be assessed by a team of politicians as they are not technically qualified. It was Governor P. Sathasivam who first announced that social audits will be implemented in the PWD while addressing the Assembly in June this year.

However, when PWD minister G. Sudhakaran realised that the roads in his home town Alappuzha was full of potholes, the contractors and engineers came under his wrath.  Engineers and contractors have demanded that if at all government wants to introduce social audit, they have to frame rules through an Act and make it legally binding. They noted that the observation made by the social auditing team is a layman's report without any technical finding.

“For example, if a person has to identify the fault in a designed road like the ones in Mr Sudhakaran’s constituency in Ambalapuzha, only an expert can point out the discrepancies it,” a PWD engineer said. However, it should be recalled that social auditing was first introduced by the previous V.S. Achuthanandan government where M. Vijayakumar was the then PWD minister. Among the flurry of announcements made by Vijayakumar then, it met with an early death.

The main objective of the LDF government to have a social audit of road works is to ensure that the road construction and repair adhere to specific quality criteria. It was decided after there has been much hue and cry over potholed roads across the PWD and NH roads and there was a clamour that the quality of the construction was one of the major reasons for the poor state of roads across the state.