Digging of roads to lay CCTV cable lines underway; Will agency repair roads after completion of task

Aurangabad, Oct 31:

The Aurangabad Smart City Development Corporation Limited (ASCDCL) had shortlisted an agency to fix 700 CCTV cameras in different corners of the city under the Smart City project.

The private company has started digging trenches on the side of wide roads in the city to lay cables for developing a network of CCTV cameras. The Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) had granted permission for digging, but who will take responsibility to ensure the roads will be repaired and levelled so that the vehicles do not face inconvenience.

It is a history in Aurangabad that the private agencies would never abide by the condition mentioned in the tender or repair the roads after laying off any cables. The Sewage Upgradation and Development Programme (SUDP) contractor, as per conditions mentioned in tender, was supposed to construct patches of tar road after completion of laying drainage pipelines, but he did not.

Later on, a big company was permitted to lay optic fibre cable (OFC), and the same thing happened as the company left the unevenly surfaced road after filling of trenches.

Now, the new agency approved by ASCDCL has started to dig the trenches on T V Centre to Jadhavwadi road using a breaker on Saturday. All the paving blocks fixed near the side of the road turned into pieces. Now, the question again arises will the agency fix the paving blocks after completing its job. The AMC officers do not have the answer. They defended pointing out that there is a condition mentioned in the tender that the agency will have to repair the road (as it was previously) after completion of work.