Deputy chief minister Tejaswi on Wednesday launched three e-initiatives of the road construction department that he heads: a computerised road maintenance monitoring system, a system to track road-maintenance vehicles and an online register of road department contractors.
Under the road assets maintenance contract, the government will maintain 7,760km roads for five years. Every detail related to roads and the contractors assigned to maintain the stretches would be available online. Before this, the details were only available offline and flying squads faced problems in taking action against officials or contractors if inspections revealed something amiss.
Residents can now complain to the government about any road across the state by emailing on complainroadmaintenance@gmail.com, logging on to www.rcd.bih.in or calling 18003456233.
"We are doing all this to bring transparency into the functioning of the department," said Tejaswi. "Our aim is to ensure the people reach the state capital in five hours from any part of the state. Our second objective is the Road Master Plan 2035. All these initiatives are being taken to provide people the best road connectivity. This is just the beginning and I will keep on upgrading the programmes as required."
Road construction department principal secretary Sudhir Kumar, who was Lalu Prasad's officer on special duty when Tejaswi's father was the railway minister, said: "The way Lalu ji revolutionised Indian Railways with online ticketing, Tejaswiji will bring revolution in the road construction department."
The global positioning system (GPS) tracking of "road ambulances" will ensure officials know the exact location of the 67 vehicles available with the department. Launched in 2014, the road ambulances are meant for quick repair of damaged roads, clear obstacles and deal with hit-and-run cases and major accidents.
"During last year's election, I toured the state by road and did not find a single road ambulance," Tejaswi said. "As I took charge of the road construction department, I instructed officials to fit the vehicles with GPS devices so that their position can be tracked. Today I feel proud that our department has achieved it."
Besides location information, the tracking system will provide the control room other details, including last real-time update and the driver's cellphone number. It will also let the department know how many kilometres a particular road ambulance has covered on a given day.
The final initiative, the contractor online registration system, will save contractors the trouble of visiting government offices to register for road construction projects. Once a contractor registers online, s/he will get a certificate within five days.