The curse of unreliable consultants

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The BMC’s decision to appoint a consultant to monitor the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) works is yet another sign of the civic body’s over reliance on so-called “expert parties”. Despite several botch-ups by consultants in the past, the BMC refuses to learn its lessons and continues to splurge crores of rupees on them. The recent move to pay an additional `99.57 crore to the consultant in the Mumbai Sewage Disposal Project (MSDP) is one of the examples.
Inspite of slow progress of the MSDP project, the BMC gave its nod to pay an additional `99.57 crore to the consultants, a consortium of M/s Mott McDonalds (UK), M/s RV Anderson Associates Ltd (Canada) and Mott McDonalds Pvt Ltd (India) and PHE Consultants. When the MSDP work began in April 2007, the consultant fee was `83.86 crore. However, as the project work further increased, the consultant fee was also hiked by an additional `99.57 crore. The variation amounts to 118 per cent, which means that the BMC will be paying `185 crore only as consultant fee for the project.
It has virtually become a rule in the BMC to appoint a consultant for its projects. However, the past track record of consultants is far from satisfactory. There have been several controversies in the past over the role of consultants in civic projects, with corporators alleging that they have not been of much use and only caused monetary loss to the civic body.
The Gorai dumping ground closure last year is a case in point. Due to an error on the part of a consultant, the BMC had to pay back `15 crore to the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in the scientific closure project. It was deduced that the consultant, IL&FS, gravely erred in assessing the carbon credits, due to which the civic body had to face a huge financial loss, said civic officials. In the project, the BMC had paid IL&FS `1.22 crore as consultant fees. Following the goof-up, the civic body has now asked the consultant to return the fees.
In another incident, the site of the Love Grove pumping station in Worli also had to be changed due to the failure of a consultant to spot an old road bridge that would obstruct the flow of water. This resulted in increasing the project cost by an additional `10 crore.
Corporators have demanded that the civic body do away with the practice of appointing private consultants for civic projects and instead trust its own civic engineers for technical expertise.
“The idea of appointing a consultant is to make sure that you execute the project perfectly, but if this is not happening, then their services should be stopped,” said standing committee member and Samajwadi Party corporator Rais Shaikh.
Private consultants, apart from estimating the total project cost, also prepare the project design. However, their entry in the scene has reduced the role of civic engineers to only getting necessary permissions for the project and supervising it.
“The BMC should do away with the practice of consultants for every project,” said opposition leader Dnyanraj Nikam from Congress. “It is a well-known fact as to why consultants are appointed in the BMC. They are always hand-in-glove with top civic officials. The consultants should be appointed only when things are beyond the capability of the civic body. However, in many projects they are being favoured by sidelining the civic officials.”