Quality consultancy is very important: Road Secretary

NEW DELHI: Having quality and experienced consultants is important for smooth implementation of infrastructure projects, a top government official said today.

"Transparency amongst the consultants is very very important. In the recent past in the North-east we have had 2-3 big projects which ran into serious issues of poor consultancy," Road Secretary Vijay Chibber said at a FICCI conference here.

These projects were awarded to the private companies Nagaland and Meghalaya state governments.

"The problems did not look apparent in the beginning but subsequently when the revised estimates came it was found that the consultant reports were very very poor," Chibber said.

On asked whether this problem exists only in the north-eastern region, he said, "In the north-east problem is a little more rampant, I won't say its only in the north-east.

"Nagaland project is at the enquiry stage, third party oversight mechanism is being put in place and for the Meghalaya project we have sanctioned the revised estimates as the missing links identified in that project were actually missing links," he added.

"The consultants and the government should work hand in hand and importance should be paid to acquisition of land," he said adding that each consultant has a profile which is in public domain and should be updated from time to time.