Tenders floated for work that's long done
Chennai: Violating the
Tamil Nadu Tender Transparency Act
provisions,
Greater Chennai Corporation
(GCC) has floated nine tenders worth 2.2 crore for civic work that had been completed at least four months ago — without any prior bidding.
The work, ranging from road restoration and footpath kerbs to railings and median painting, was executed on Lang's Garden Road, Rajaji Salai, Raja Muthiah Salai, Elephant Gate Bridge, and Pantheon Road, among others. A TOI check confirmed that all work was completed and sources within GCC, in Royapuram zone, admitted it. These tenders, floated last week, were issued to regularize payments to pre-fixed contractors. Some contractors, who participated in the recent bids, said they were made to withdraw.
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After the
e-tendering system
was introduced, all departments have to upload the tender bids on the TN Tender's website, and any contractor can participate to bid at competitive prices. These tenders are accessible to the public too.
However, in this case, GCC's bus routes roads department chose to send the invitation to participate in the tender through email to selected contractors only. TOI accessed the private mails sent to contractors by the bus route roads department asking them to participate in the tender.
"The tenders were orchestrated for work that was already done. We got wind of them through friends and applied, but officials kept pressuring us to back out," said a bidder. Other bidders said it is a dummy tender setup, as the main contractor, who had already completed the work, entered the fray with two known dummy bidders, ensuring he quotes the lowest and wins.
By law, GCC can issue
closed tenders
for emergency civic jobs such as patchwork or wall repairs below 50,000. But each of these nine projects ranged from 15 lakh to 30 lakh. Commissioner J Kumaragurubaran and mayor R Priya said they would look into the matter.
Even small-value projects are now supposed to go through the govt e-marketplace (GEM) portal for fair competition. Contractors say that while this case involved 2 crore, across GCC's 15 zones, 150-200 such closed tenders are floated every month.
"These closed tenders are just corruption tools," said Arappor Iyakkam convenor Jayaram Venkatesan. "E-tendering was brought in to end this. Yet they keep going back to the old ways. The commissioner must be held accountable," he said.
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