Housing and Urban Affairs Secretary Manoj Joshi on Tuesday raised concerns over the maintenance of government buildings by the Central Public Works Department (CPWD), saying that all buildings can not be demolished and remade.
Addressing the CPWD’s 168th annual day event, Mr. Joshi said the construction agency had improved over the past 10 years and was now the “first choice” for government departments to carry out works. However, he said the CPWD was lagging behind in upkeep and maintenance. He said the maintenance in a “large number of government buildings” was “not professional compared to what you see around the world”.
“It’s not as if present O&M [operations and maintenance] is costing us less. It is costing us a lot. And all those ad-hoc changes in everyones’ rooms, in every corridor, in every tile work which we do costs us a lot. Including in the houses….You can’t demolish and reconstruct each and every building,” Mr. Joshi said.
