The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways is taking steps to increase the quality of road construction further.

As part of it, National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) officials, engineers, the road ministry and other agencies involved in national highway construction will be held responsible for failure in checking the quality of work, reports The Economic Times.

Repeated failures to comply or in case of loss of any structure during construction would garner major or minor penalties on officials. Currently, only contractors and consultants supervising work or independent engineers are facing penalties.

According to a circular issued by the ministry this week, while works costing more than Rs 300 crore and projects involving a bridge of more than 60 meters must have bi-monthly inspections, other projects must be inspected every month.

The circular said officers have to carry out sample laboratory and on-site tests on essential quality characteristics of materials, mixes and final products.

Also recently, NHAI has made mandatory use of drones for monthly video recording of National Highway projects during all development, construction, operation, and maintenance stages to enhance transparency.

Under it, contractors and concessionaires must carry out the drone video recording in the presence of the team leader of the supervision consultant and upload comparative project videos of the current and last month on NHAI’s portal ‘Data Lake’, capturing various project-related developments during the month.