To make contractors accountable, BMC to feed their data in

In a bid to make civic contractors accountable in the wake of the road and desilting scams that rocked the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), the civic body has decided to feed all the data related to the contractors' performance in its internal system.
The BMC will assign a Unique Identification Number (UID) to each contractor, in which their data would be accessible to all the civic departments.
According to an official, BMC Commissioner Ajoy Mehta has given his instructions to this effect.
"The civic chief ordered to make it mandatory that details about all the contractors engaged with the civic body, their registration and work performance would be linked with the UID codes and it would be available to all the civic departments," the official said.

In the recent past, the cash-rich BMC was rocked by two major scams. In the Rs 352-crore roads scam, the Mumbai police arrested 26 people, including three senior civic officials and employees of six tainted road contractors and two third-party auditors. Then there are several official under the lens in the Rs 80-crore desilting scam.
"Under the new system, we will have the horoscope of the contractors. Now it would be easy for the BMC to find out the data about them. The services of those contractors whose work is not found up to the mark, would be stopped," the official said.

Details regarding the projects given to the contractors, the cost involved, progress of work, work quality report, initial and part payment released, penalty imposed (if any), etc would be available on the system, he said.
The system would come into effect from the next month as the contractors have been asked to post all the work-related and other details before May 31, the official said.