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.
Poor quality of contractors
He said there was a need for modern management practices and “efficient cost-effective management” of buildings. The second issue he flagged was the poor quality of contractors. He said a large number of contractors faced cash flow problems, leading to delays.
“You are as good as the contractor. You are not constructing the building, the contractor is,” Mr. Joshi said, adding that better pre-qualification criterion and improving the contractors’ capacity were required. Mr. Joshi’s statement comes at a time the CPWD is carrying out the Central Vista project, which includes the demolition of several post-Independence government office buildings to be replaced with a new Common Central Secretariat.
Later, in his address to the crowd of CPWD officials, Union Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Puri said he agreed with Mr. Joshi. Mr. Puri said requests for changing the quality-related parameters in a project were a challenge.
“Everybody should realise that if you want to construct a building within the time and cost limit, there are limits to how many changes you can effect. I’ve personally been in the battlefront. I’ve had to very often face the situation where I have to say no, this cannot be done, irrespective of who the owner of the building is or who will be the occupant of the building,” Mr. Puri said.
Earlier in the event, CPWD director-general Shailendra Sharma said the CPWD had completed projects worth ₹18,814 crore in 2021-2022.
