Avadi municipality’s “erroneous” RTI info puts officials in trouble

C Shivakumar
Chennai:

After dilly dallying on providing information under the RTI act, Avadi
Municipality  exposed itself to trouble by providing erroneous
information on roads being laid in four streets in ward number 27.

Mohammed Iliyaas of Satta Panchayat Iyakkam in a Right To Information
(RTI) application sought details of works completed in Avadi
municipality. However, the information was denied and Avadi
municipality provided information about a single ward (Ward number
27).

In the information it was revealed that roads were laid in Alagirisamy
Street, Kalaignar Street, Mayor Stalin Street, Velayutham Street,
K.V.K.Samy Street.

It was revealed that amount of Rs 14 lakh was spent in laying Cement
Concrete Road with storm water drain at Alagirisamy Street, a Cement
Concrete Road worth 4.7 lakh at Mayor Stalin Street, a cement concrete
road worth Rs 4 lakh at Kalaignar Street and a Cement Concrete Road at
KVK street worth Rs 20 lakh.

Later Iliyas along with Satta Panchayat Iyakam president Siva Ilango
visited the spot to find that there were no roads laid in the four
streets.

“The roads are laid only on paper not on those streets,” said Iliyas
while highlighting the condition of roads in the area. “We demand that
legal action should taken against the officials who has approved the
payment for these unlaid roads. We are exposing this during the
Vigilance Awareness Week,” he said.

Interestingly, Avadi Municipal Commissioner Sivasubramanian denied the
allegations of any irregularities. However, he did accept that roads
were not laid in the four streets and blamed it on clerical error on
part of the official providing RTI information.

“This is a packaged work. We did take up works on nearby streets. The
work on the four streets would be completed after the monsoon. The
work was not taken up since the work on underground sewage network as
well as water connections were not completed,” Sivasubramanian said.

Interestingly, Satta Panchayat Iyakkam has proposed of allocating a
particular number to a road online so that details regarding when it
was laid, contract amount, contractor name, minimum guarantee period
could be accessed. All the roads in the Corporation or Municipalities
can be given a Number like (CH001, CH001..etc).

If an SMS is sent to this number, with road number, the details should
be immediately sent to the citizen immediately. By having this system,
all the citizen will be able to have quick access to data regarding
their local roads. This technological system will enable citizen to
fight against corruption. This data can be also made available in
website.