Updates from the Field

In Bhubaneswar, the month of January commenced with the Model Code of Conduct in place and the Elections due on 9th of January. This was followed by Urban Local Body (ULB) election on the 17th of January, 2014. The first half of the month was spent in all the administrative activities.  Most of the officials were deputed as Election officers. Nevertheless, the CMG meeting chaired by Development Commissioner gave a go ahead for the commencement of the construction work of public toilets and community toilets under Project Sammaan.

Rounds of interaction with the Junior Engineer and the Executive Engineer I on the technical aspects took place with the documents scrutinised by the former. Further, the Public Toilet tender was opened on the 9th of December, 2013 and is still under technical evaluation. The review has been completed by the Junior Engineer and the Assistant Engineer and is currently under scrutiny by the Executive Engineer I of Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation. A decision is still pending on the single bid tender whether they technically qualify as per the norms of the tender.

For Cuttack, the project has achieved the conditional technical approval which was one of the milestones for the project. Series of discussions on the technical aspects took place between the officials of the PHD Department and the team members of Project Sammaan. Currently work is going on the tender documents and the BoQ’s which are needed at the time of tender float. Further, files have also been processed requesting the Election Commissioner to permit floating of tender  during the period of enforcement of code of conduct which would be over by the 6th of February, 2014.

All in all the month saw progress in terms of achieving technical sanction as well as progress from the CMG on the sites proposed by Project Sammaan. Owing to the ULB Election, things were slow paced. With the myriad of challenges and the new pieces of information coming across time, we are working to facilitate any meetings and conversations between the government partners and the team to expedite the process.

As for Capacity Building activities, we briefed the Chief Engineer on the development of Project Sammaan in Cuttack along with the approvals procured including the administrative approval. Meetings with various hierarchy of the engineering department were done to communicate with the higher officials. Meetings were also done with the officials of both the corporations to convey the urgency of releasing the tender.