Faults detected at a big BOT highway project

Out of several projects to expand the section of National Highway 1 starting from the north-central province of Thanh Hoa to Can Tho city in the Mekong Delta, the 30km stretch crossing Quang Binh province under build-operate-transfer (BOT) model has received the ‘worst’ state audit appraisal.

The project developer, Tasco JSC, is an experienced developer of transport infrastructure projects and the state oversight agency in this case is Project Management Unit No. 6 under the Ministry of Transport (MoT).

The project aims to upgrade National Highway 1’s 30km stretch from two lanes into four lanes with at width of 20.5m to allow a maximum velocity of 80km per hour with an initial investment capital of about VND2 trillion ($92 million).

The state auditor has found that many parts of the asphalt concrete surface are already suffering from serious quality deterioration. In fact, quality degradation and sinking road surface (more than 2.5cm deep) covers a 15,600 square metres of the project site.

By mid-October 2015, around the time the State Audit began its work, and four months after the project was opened to traffic, Tasco took measures to improve the road quality to along 6,200sq.m only, leaving large sections of degraded road surface untreated.

Errors were also detected in the contractor selection stage and contract signing as implemented by Tasco.

For example, out of the several sections that make up the entire project site, only the 8km section, stretching from Km 617-Km 625, was carried out by Tasco Construction (a Tasco subsidiary). Meanwhile, the remaining sections were handled by outside companies such as PVC Truong Son, Hung Duc, and Bac Phuong JSC.

In respect to equipment tender packages, Tasco was found guilty of holding a bid when in fact they were yet to draw up and submit their plans on procurement and contractor selection to the MoT. In addition, they had not sent the final results on bidder selection to the MoT as regulated in Contract 12818/HD.BOT–BGTVT, which it had signed with the ministry on November 2013.

The state auditors also found that current state regulations to control transport vehicle volumes passing the toll station were not being properly handled at the project, thus affecting the accuracy of actual toll revenue.

“The onus of accountability is on the developer Tasco and the oversight agency Project Management Unit No 6,” said state audit deputy general director Nguyen Quang Thanh.