New Delhi: The national highways regulator
NHAI plans to double its manpower strength to about 800 in the
next three months to achieve the transport ministry's
ambitious target of building 35,000 km of roads in the next
five years, a top official said.
"Faced with the challenge of building 20 km of road
every day in the next five years, the National Highways
Authority of India (NHAI) is on a recruitment drive and plans
to almost double its existing 400 employees strength by June,"
the official said.
"We have already selected about 25 senior officials of
the chief general manager and general manager ranks, besides
80 deputy general managers and 150 managers, as NHAI has been
facing a severe manpower crunch," the official said.
The process for appointment of the remaining is on and
would be completed soon, the official said, adding officials
are drawn from various fields, including legal, financial and
technical, besides being on deputation in view of the
increasing number of road projects being awarded.
Soon after taking charge last year, transport minister
Kamal Nath had set a target of constructing 20 km roads a day
and envisaged awarding projects worth Rs 2 lakh crore by 2011.
The government has already decided to decentralise NHAI
which earlier had only about 100 field offices, manned by
junior level officers to oversee projects across the country.
The move to decentralise work is aimed at speeding up the
process and achieving the target of building roads at the pace
of 20 km a day, the official said, stating NHAI is in the
process of opening regional offices to be manned by Chief
General Manager-level officials to award projects directly.
Besides it is also setting up about 150 special land
acquisition units across the states which will address the
problems like land acquisition and environment clearances in
cooperation with the states concerned.
The ministry, had last month, said as many as 140 road
projects out of 211 were delayed due to factors like problems
in land acquisition. Earlier this month, road secretary Brahm
Dutt said a total of 34 road projects were awarded in 2009-10
while 16 bids are under process and 31 are likely to be
finalised soon.
"These together amounts to award of projects for building
7,800 km roads. We will award remaining projects soon to
achieve the target of constructing about 12,000 km roads by
June, as fixed by the ministry," Dutt had said.
The ministry had last year formulated a 'work plan' for
2009-10 and 2010-11, aiming to award projects for building
about 12,000 km roads each year. However, later the ministry
had revised deadline from March 31, 2010 to June 2010.
PTI
First Published: Thursday, April 15, 2010, 19:27