Nabarangpur:Feb, 25: Under the leadership of Nabarangpur District Contractors’ Association President Sudhir Panda and Secretary Sudhanshu Nayak, around 60 contractors have opposed the government’s new tender circular and begun an agitation from today at Lower PMG Square in Bhubaneswar.
One of their primary objections is against the prevailing 14.99% “less” limit in the construction tender process. The association strongly opposed the move to remove the 14.99% cap, stating that eliminating this ceiling would adversely affect the quality of construction work. They also alleged that the state government has shown a discriminatory attitude toward local Odia contractors, which they claim undermines Odia identity.
Among their key demands are:
Enactment of a law to ensure that bids are not quoted below 0.00% of the Schedule of Rates (SoR).
Annual regular revision and stabilization of the SoR as per codal provisions.
Implementation of “One State, One Law” in performance criteria and inclusion of an arbitration clause in the Standard Bidding Document (SBD).
Preparation of a list of operational minor mineral quarries (excluding non-operational ones) and clearly mentioning the quarry name during tender allotment.
Increase of the upper limit for short tender call notices from ₹5 lakh to ₹10 lakh.
Cancellation of per-day penalty when work timelines are extended for necessary reasons.
Proper calculation and implementation of price escalation as per the 2012 resolution.
Transfer of the e-procurement system (currently managed by the Chief Engineer’s office of the Rural Development Department) to the Works Department’s e-procurement cell to avoid unnecessary delays.
Due to the contractors’ strike, construction works worth hundreds of crores of rupees across various departments in the district have come to a standstill since .
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