Government lost a hefty amount to the delay in work and to sort it out the Irrigation and Public Health (IPH) Department has withdrawn the powers of executive engineers to grant extension of tender time periods in bigger contracts. As per the orders issued by the department, now, the authorities who have approved the tenders can only grant permission in extension of the time period of contracts.
It is learned that Superintendent engineers have the power to approve tenders up to the cost of Rs 60 lakhs. All tenders above the said amount have to be approved by chief engineers or engineer-in-chief. However, since executive engineers were signing and executing authorities on almost all the contracts, they were in many cases granting extension of time periods to contractors on their own. The sources said many such extensions were given in the Swan channelisation projects in Una district, which is the biggest irrigation work, being under taken by the IPH Department.
