The Prime Minister?s Office (PMO) has asked the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) to create a bank of ready-to-award projects of 10,000 km of national highways.
It has told the NHAI to identify stretches and prepare detailed project reports (DPRs) for them by the year-end. This will be an additional obligation on the authority, which anyway has to meet its recently-revised annual target of awarding 8,000 km projects.
This, according to the NHAI officials, seems to be a herculean task as the authority lacks both manpower and funds to do what the PMO wants. ?We can outsource the DPRs for another 10,000 km, but we do not have enough people in the department to even follow that up with various agencies. Also, it would add an extra cost to our budget for this year,? an NHAI official said on condition of anonymity.
Manpower is a major issue that has been afflicting the organisation for a long time.
Last year, NHAI had announced it will hire around 200 at various levels, including general managers (GMs), deputy GMs and executive directors.
The official said though some recruitment had happened in the last few months, it was not enough to meet future requirements.
In fact, at the beginning of this financial year, the PMO had told NHAI to try to award over 9,000 km of highway projects, following which it has already increased its monthly target of projects and plans to add 8,000 km of roads, worth Rs 57,000 crore in 2011-12 against 7,300 km projects planned initially.
The organisation has managed to award projects for 3,500 km so far.
There was a huge debate between the Planning Commission and NHAI over determining the authority?s annual target last year. While NHAI was confident that it would be able to award over 9,000 km this year, the Plan panel ruled it out completely, saying that the authority could award only about 7,000 km. A Planning Commission official justified it again, ?Only 1,780 km of national highways were constructed last year against the target of 2,500 km. It?s good that they are able to award the projects, but the focus should also be on construction and completion of the projects.?