The Hindu 21.09.2009
MCD to concretise select roads
Staff Reporter
| It also plans to take up water harvesting on some stretches |
Handing over the list part of routine exercise
“Continuous process of maintainance will be on”
NEW DELHI: To tackle damage caused to certain identified roads during each monsoon due to water-logging and potholes, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi will take up concretisation of these roads following the handing over of a list of 40 such roads by the traffic police to the civic agency recently. It also plans to take up water harvesting on these road stretches.
The list has names of all the roads that are worst affected. They include Palam Dabri Road, Loni Road, Naraina T-point, DDU Marg opposite Andhra School, Pusa Road, Pachkuyian road and Subhash Marg among others.
According to the civic body, the list was handed over as part of routine exercise of sharing and corroborating inputs about the road conditions and what needs to be done for their improvement.
A senior MCD official said: “We were already aware of certain roads in low-lying areas where there is always a problem of water-logging and potholes during rains. So we are now planning to relay these roads using the concretisation technique instead of using bitumen as done presently.”
“Thus we would be taking all possible steps to ensure that no road damage takes place and there are no potholes on these roads even if there are torrential rains. We also plan to start a water harvesting programme in the low-lying areas to ensure that the rainwater collected is taken underground for recharging of groundwater instead of being taken to the drains,” he added.
However, civic body officials admitted that it may not be feasible to implement this programme on all road stretches and only select roads would be included under the water harvesting plan.
The senior MCD official said: “Meanwhile as part of our continuous process to maintain our roads we would continue cleaning drains, clearing bell mouths and repairing potholes if found anywhere. This year there was hardly any major water-logging on our roads as we started our drain de-silting efforts last year itself instead of starting just before the monsoon season.”