Pune Municipality Corporation scraps mandatory registration for contractors

Pune: The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has decided to provide business opportunities to educated unemployed youths by giving them a chance to take part in the tender process of its development works. The civic body has scrapped the condition of mandatory registration for contractors to support open competition and avoid syndicate in tenders.

Municipal Commissioner Shekhar Gaikwad late on Friday evening issued an order and scrapped the condition of compulsory registration for contractors. Gaikwad stated that the PMC implements infrastructure, development works and projects. It floats tenders for these works. To bid for tenders, there was a pre-condition to register online. Due to this pre-condition, most of the contractors were not able to take part in the tender process. The PMC had planned to remove the condition. Under the ‘ease of doing business’, it decided to remove the condition for the sake of transparency and healthy competition in development works. The decision has been made applicable from April 1, 2020.

Head of PMC Vigilance Department Rajendra Muthe told Sakal Times, “Many contractors were denied participation in the tender process of PMC’s development work in the absence of online registration. In open competition, we cannot make compulsory registration. Even after fulfilling other necessary criteria such as education, experience, government contractor registration, etc., contractors were denied opportunity in the PMC tender process.”

Muthe further stated, “We noticed that tenders were being floated to favour particular contractors and avoided competition due to the registration condition. This also led to the forming of a syndicate and hiking of tender rates. We are also rethinking on the experience certificate condition for getting new work in PMC. If we are not giving work to educated unemployed youths or new contractors, how would they get experience?” 

There are over 10,000 contractors registered in PMC. Under the earlier condition, they had to pay registration charges to PMC, which provided them with registration numbers.

There are categories under which contractors get registration such as Civil General Works, Engineer (Civil), Electrical General Works, Engineer (Electrical) and Electromechanical. PMC was also granting registration to unemployed students, who have completed the Building Maintenance and Civil Engineering Assistance Course from the Industrial Training Institute and Vocational Training Board.