The flooded Kosi region

Patna, Jan. 23: The state government has come up with a flood calendar to plug leakage of crores every year on the pretext of preventing deluge because of an unholy nexus between a handful of water resources department engineers and contractors.

The calendar recommends early beginning of flood prevention work to stop the evil practice of contractors claiming funds for work they have not done. This year, the flood protection work will start within a week instead of March-April — the normal practice.

The calendar released by the water resources department has a timeframe for everything — site inspection, scheme approval, inviting tenders, awarding tenders as well as the beginning and completion of projects. “It also defines the dates of field inspection by the principal secretary and the minister of the department as well as periodical reviews,” said an officer of the water resources department.

Each year, Rs 800 crore is earmarked for flood fighting. A bulk of it is swindled away.

A source in the water resources department said an early start of work would curb the engineer-contractor nexus. “Ideally, the flood prevention work should start from January-February, when the water-level of rivers is lowest. Pitching of riverbanks with boulders should also start then to prevent erosion. But the work is usually started in March or April, when the water-level increases. It becomes difficult to verify how much work has been done by the contractors after that, thanks to the certificates issued by the engineers,” said the officer.

For this year, the last date for filing tenders for flood-related works was December 8, 2011. The department had aimed at starting work for this year from December 28 last year. But a section of contractors moved Patna High Court, which imposed a stay on the whole process. On January 20, the high court dismissed the petition of the contractors.

Till the stay order, the water resources department received 1,549 applications for 225 flood prevention works.

Incidentally, the cut-off date for completion of anti-flood work for non-Ganga rivers is May 31. For Ganga, it is June 15.

The benefits of an early start was realised last year. “The department had to fight flood only once after threat of a breach. Earlier, we had to go for flood fighting on numerous occasions. Last year, only Rs 20 crore was spent on it,” said the official.