Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

Roads project to resume in March

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Work on the City Roads Improvement Project is set to resume by the first week of March. The development of the Statue-Overbridge stretch of M.G. Road will be taken up first under the resumed project, sources in Thiruvananthapuram Road Development Company Ltd. (TRDCL) said.

Project officials said the decision to take up the development of M.G. Road was finalised with a view to reduce the inconvenience to traders. The work is expected to be completed before Onam.

The government has renewed the contract with the private consortium implementing the project and stepped up efforts to complete the acquisition of land for road widening.

It also agreed to arbitration to settle the company’s claim for compensation to offset the losses caused by the delay in handing over the land. The government said most of the land required for road widening had been acquired.

Project managers said the work would pick up as soon as the schedule was worked out. “We have started remobilising the workforce,” an official said.

With the project grinding to a halt in November 2006, the company had redeployed most of its workforce to other states. It was also forced to dismantle its bitumen and concrete-mixing plants and shift them elsewhere. While the land housing the company’s yard and employees’ quarters at Chakka was handed over to Air India for the construction of an aircraft maintenance hangar, another site at Anayara had to be vacated under pressure from the landowner.

Project managers said the district administration was making arrangements to hand over the agriculture world market at Anayara on the National Highway bypass to Punj Lloyd to set up a campsite for its mixing plant and stockyard. They said the work would begin with the company taking small plants on hire before the campsite was established.

The delay in relocating the cemeteries of two churches at Pattoor and a land exchange deal between the Southern Air Command and the Travancore Devaswom Board to realign the main road fronting the Shanghumughom beach are two major components that remain to be completed.

Of the 42 km of roads identified for the project, only 14.66 km were handed over to the TRDCL by the end of the two-year schedule that ended in November 2006. Work on six of the 12 road corridors had not begun, while on several other stretches, the widening had to be taken up in bits and pieces.

By the initial cut-off date of December 2004, the government had delivered only 6 km of roads. In the 15 months since then, it could transfer only 5 more km.

The failure to hand over land for bus bays affected the progress of work on several key stretches. The construction of the flyover at the Bakery Junction was abandoned halfway through and work on the second flyover at Mele Pazhavangady failed to take off owing to hitches in land acquisition.

Meanwhile, the TRDCL has started work on the maintenance of the roads completed under the project.

The replanting of the median on the Kowdiar-Vellayambalam stretch has begun. Project supervisors said the side drains were being cleaned up.

During the clearing of the drains, workers found a hotel releasing waste water into the drain. “They had punctured the side of the drain to discharge the water. We will take steps to stop this,” an official said.

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