Sunday 20 November 2011

Part-II-Have we lost transparency in Sub-Divisional Tendering?


It is worth disclosing the business of corruption in Sub-Divisional tendering, where in most of the cases the beneficiary Contractor/Agency bribes the Executive Engineer and the Sub-Divisional Officer to get a chunk of split-up Non-Plan works in his favour. Priority is given to the regular Contractors/Agencies or those having political liaison.

Suppose a Non-Plan building (original work) of value Rs.15,00,000/- is split-up into 30 reaches, each of value Rs.50,000/-. The Sub-Divisional Officer then, at a time, put forth the tender call notice for all these 30 reaches, and reserves the bid acceptance date for only one to three days. The information about the tender call notice is kept hidden from all except the Executive Engineer and the beneficiary contractor/ agency.  To favour fixing of Sub-Divisional tender the Sub-Divisional Officer knowingly fails to transmit the copies of this tender call notice to the nearby Government Offices within the District, and this happens in violation to codal provision. This sort of violation is evident from the fact that you will never find the entry of a Sub-Divisional tender call notice of one Public Works Division in the inward diary of any other Public Works Divisions or other Government offices within the District prior to the lapse of the bid acceptance date.

Now the Sub-Divisional Officer collects a sum of Rs.416 (cost of each tender paper including 4% VAT) x 3 (number of tender paper sold) x 30 (total number of reaches) =Rs.37, 440/- or even lesser amount of Tender Paper Cost is realized where the no. of tender paper sold towards each reach is less than three.

Peculiarity of fixing Sub-Divisional tenders cross all limits when all the lowest (L-1) bids for these 30 reaches are so manipulated that it never goes below 99.5% of the Tendered Work value. Similarly, from the last few years, a new trend has emerged out, where in all the reaches of a split-up work are fixed with a single Contractor/Agency. Could you now imagine how bold these authorities have become? They have even forgot, what they will reply, if they are asked by the A.G. Audit to comply regarding these peculiarities and coincidences. However, A.G. Audit never put questions before the Executive Engineer regarding these peculiarities and coincidences in their ‘Audit Objections’? The research shows that it never happened earlier. The A.G. Audit limits its objection with the note “Unnecessary splitting-up of work without any solid reason”, but if you have some idea of the Auditing Standards Clause 4.7 and the INTROSAI, you can judge that A.G. Audit has lost a bit of their ethical & moral senses.

Fixing of tender for pecuniary benefit is a serious offense and about 100% of Public Works Divisions are involved in this malpractice, however the A.G. Audit who are entrusted to analyze this sort of peculiarities and coincidences have failed in their motive.

Therefore, friends, when A.G. Audit can take this malpractice as for granted why cannot we. Let the Executive Engineer split-up all the works and distribute these split-ups among his near and dear ones, somewhat at the 'Estimated Cost' and you never worry as the A.G. Audit will never inquire about these coincidences!!! (Read Part-I)

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