Letters to the EDITOR: Engineers need to be ‘technical centric’

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Engineers need to be ‘technical centric’

The news headline 'CM to engineers: Don't solely rely on contractors', published in your esteemed daily on August 14, deserves much appreciation at a time when there are regular public complaints that roads get damaged early or rainwater gets accumulated in the middle of roads that drains out crores of rupees from the state exchequer. The CM has rightly observed that most of PWDs' roads across the state are in poor shape, resulting in severe inconvenience to thousands of commuters on a daily basis, besides wastage of public money and scarce natural resources. It is mainly because of the absence of engineers at the site during the construction that it must be given due consideration by the concerned department. When the public is unhappy with the quality of work, then what is the use of spending huge amounts of public money in the name of road construction? It is nothing but a colossal waste of public money, besides time and energy. Needless to say, over the years, a large number of people lost their lives, while many were maimed for life in motor vehicle accidents on the roads of the state. The poor quality of stretches of roads has emerged as the prime reason for fatalities among all categories of 'accidental death' in the state. The CM has rightly pointed out that our engineers need to apply their technical know-how when the road construction is in progress through their physical presence at the site since contractors are not degree holders; they are simply contractors by experience. So, depending solely on contractors means poor quality of work. Roads and bridges are the most fundamental prerequisites for development, and the absence of good road connectivity has been a big deterrent in the path of the development of the state for decades. So, the need of the hour is a stringent monitoring mechanism to check corruption, and it can be achieved if our engineers use their technical knowledge on the field properly with utmost sincerity and dedication. The time to play truant by engineers is over. It is now time to hold the guilty contractors and firms accountable to put an end to deep-rooted corruption in road construction, which has been a milch cow for a corrupt coterie of contractors, officers, and politicians.

Iqbal Saikia,

Guwahati.