Parliamentary secretary housing Er. Levi Rengma inaugurated the office building of Nagaland Government Registered Class-I Contractors Union (NGRC-ICU) at Secretariat Road, Wednesday.
NGRC-ICU office building has been constructed after 15 years of the union existence in Nagaland.
Speaking at the inauguration, Er. Levi said contractors belong to “classified service” and are accountable for sustaining the history and civilization through workmanship.
He said in national economy contractors contributes 8-11% to the GDP thereby have many responsibilities towards building nation and appealed the contractors and government to come together to build the state.
Er. Levi encouraged the contractors to take pride of their profession as they are they are the second biggest generating employment sector after agriculture sector.
He also read out the message of chief minister T. R. Zeliang, who was supposed to be the chief guest, as he is currently at Delhi.
In his message, the chief minister has congratulated the Union on their completion of 15 years of existence and for having constructed the office building.
He said contractors have to play a vital role in the development process of the state and the country, especially in the area of infra-structure development.
Zeliang said if the quality of works was shoddy, state could not be able to build real assets and any infrastructure work done without proper quality control will turn into “liabilities”.
He also lamented that in Nagaland the supervision of construction work by the engineers was normally very slack as they normally leave it to junior staff, like overseers. He added that contractors have bigger responsibility to ensure that quality control was maintained.
Referring to the execution of works in developed countries, Zeliang said high ranking engineers and contractors puts on “working suit” and personally supervises constructions at the site to ensure that all the work specification are observed and quality was maintained.
He advised state engineers and contractor to also adopt “this practice” instead of leaving everything at the work sites to overseers.
Zeliang also noted that in Nagaland most of the construction works are being done by non-local labours who has no formal education, degrees or diplomas, except their hands-on experience for which he said State could not have quality constructions.
Asserting that the condition of the roads in the state will testify, Zeliang asked the engineers and contractors of Nagaland to visit the work site as frequently as possible and supervise the works and maintain quality of the works.
The chief minister also raised the raise the issue of the existence of two parallel contractors union in Nagaland: the Nagaland Contractors & Suppliers Union (NCSU) and (NGRC-ICU) and advised that it would be more convenient for the government to deal with various problems if the unions could be merged into one.
Er. Levi also released the book on union’s 15 years of existence. The programme was chaired by vice president NGRC-1 CU while NBCC secretary Rev. Dr. Z. Kheyo pronounced invocation prayer. Parliamentary secretary Dr. Benjongliba and contractors from across the state attended the inauguration function.