If the roads in your neighbourhood are damaged, it will be a long wait before they get repaired. The process of floating tenders for road repairs has got delayed and because of a bar on road repairs during monsoon it may be September before some of them are fixed. 

“I have been running from pillar to post asking corporation officials to sanction road repair projects in my area. I wanted them done before monsoon sets in. Else they will all get damaged again in the rains,” said Anita Mondol, councillor of ward 30 that covers AH, BH, BG, CG, DG, AF and parts of SA Block.

Councillor Minu Chakraborty says roads in her Ward 37 (comprising Purbachal, IA, JA, JB, LA, LB, KA and KB blocks) are in desperate need of repairs too. “Imagine the loss of face before my voters! If work doesn’t begin right away, there will be potholes all over. People will be harassed needlessly,” she said. 

The procedure for roadwork begins when a councillor requests for the same. A tender is then floated from Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation and when a contractor is selected, a work order has to be handed over to him within a period of 30 days. Work has to begin within a week from the date that the work order is issued. 

With the first week of June being the official start of monsoon, it is an impossible situation, civic officials say. Major repairs costing more than Rs 5 lakh are stuck. There is a strong chance that even if these tenders are issued by the end of this month, actual work on the roads will not begin before September, they conceded.

At present the tender committee has only cleared projects ranging up to a budget of Rs 5 lakh each.

“It is true that a lot of time has lapsed in getting tenders ready for the roadworks projects. We are short-staffed but are doing our best,” said a civic official. 

Mayoral council member Devashis Jana is aware of the delay in the tender process. “I have talked to the departments concerned. I understand the concerns of councillors. Things will work out soon.”

Then again there are areas like FD Block which are likely to remain damaged even after monsoon  because its councillor Nilanjana Manna hasn’t even applied for repairs. “Everyone is busy with panchayat elections now. I shall look into all this later,” Manna had said when asked about the potholes in the block before the May 14 elections.