Poor quality of road construction in Odisha's Kalahandi

Orissadiary, Jan 5, 2015
Report by Rajeev Lochan Rathan; Bhubaneswar: Keeping in view of the communication development in southern Odisha the government has expedited work of road construction in rural area. But it has ignored quality control over them, resulting in poor construction of roads with potholes appearing within few days of construction. The aggressive mass grilled the construction work in charge personals in Chilipa, Dharmagarh today. After getting directives from political bosses for completing construction of roads, so that the ruling party could acquire votes in the name of development in Kalahandi for next elections. Accordingly, the AEO R & B dept. Kalahandi has directed the contractors to speed up work, so that roads could be completed before ruling party visit. Sources revealed that after receiving orders from the officers, the contractors have put in their full efforts to complete the work on time. But in this process, the quality of road construction has been fully ignored. An evident instance of this negligence is the road built from Chilipa road to Chatishagarh border. Even though the road has been built a few days ago, allegedly due to poor construction, pits have appeared on the road at many places. Not only these, joint of the two portions of roads have not been leveled properly and complete discrepancy in level of the road can be easily witnessed. At some places even the premix laid down on the road is already withering. The building of allegedly such poor quality of road has raised serious concerns from the residents in the village. According to Smt.Sukanti Sa, Zilla Parishad member Dharmagarh zone who had earlier raised the issue of poor construction of roads alleged that owing to corrupt nexus between the contractors and officers, poor roads were being built. She alleged that the corrupt nexus was playing with the taxpayers. Money which is all going in unproductive. She said an independent inquiry in this regard should be initiated.  Meanwhile, Ashish Kumar Agrawal Director of Arati Infratech Private Limited who is the incharge of the road construction refuted the allegations claiming that the roads were being built with sensor paver according to the prescribed measurement. He also asserted that they are keeping a full check over the newly built roads for ensuring judicious use of allocated money. - See more at: http://www.orissadiary.com/CurrentNews.asp?id=56212#sthash.KdHEVLms.dpuf