Piece works leave room for corruption

Piece works leave room for corruption
New INdian Express

BANGALORE: Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BMP) is confused over piece works as there are two conflicting proposals - one by the Government and another by BMP council. But it appears that the civic body is yet to understand the actual significance of piece works and learn to cope with them.

While the Government wrote in June to BMP to limit the piece works to tasks that cost not more than Rs 2 lakh, the Council in July sent a resolution to the government seeking the ceiling to be increased to Rs 5lakh. In fact, the ceiling was Rs5 lakh earlier and it was reduced as the Government thought that the councillors were misusing them.

On the other hand, experts suggest that BMP’s very method of handling piece works was faulty and maintain that corruption exists in every department and at every level and that it cannot justify reduction of contingency works.

The piece works are normally those works that need to be taken up immediately without wasting time in inviting tenders and hence there is no cost estimate involved. Normally, a piece work is awarded to an agency on rates of work and it is a very loose arrangement - BMP can issue a stop order anytime and the contractor can walk out any time. The only binding fact is that the civic body would pay the contractor for the work executed at the rates in PWD schedule of rates.

The contractors feel that Rs 5 lakh ceiling on piece work is not sufficient.

However, BMP officials feel that the upper limit of piece works could be increased to Rs20 lakh while building adequate checks and balances in the system.