The Hindu       21.12.2010

GHMC refuses to allow road cutting

HYDERABAD: Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has stopped giving permissions for private telecom and Internet service providers from digging roads in an effort to halt damages to the recently laid and ongoing recarpeting road works in different parts of the capital.

Net and telecom service providers were asked to form a consortium and to consider taking permissions for laying any cables in one go so that all these can be inducted into a common underground duct to be laid or already laid on the roadsides.

“Save for the Water Board and CPDCL to take up emergency repairs or works, we have categorically informed service providers that no more road cuttings. The multiplicity of agencies involved in digging is causing much inconvenience to the public and traffic too as the roads are getting damaged,” explained Chief Engineer R. Dhan Singh.

Even if GHMC is collecting road cutting fee from different agencies at roughly Rs.2,000 a metre for restoring the damaged road sections, Mr. Singh pointed out that such restoration is spoiling the road ‘camber' for the entire stretch making it uneven and susceptible to breaking up when it showers.

Intense competition

Moreover, senior officials also feel the service providers have already put in enough capacity in the last few years and intense competition is only making them dig more. Most service providers are reluctant to do the trenchless technology where only a six inch incision into the ground is made to lay a cable.

Along with the cable operators who dangerously wrung wires on electric poles, telecom/net service providers have been told by Commissioner Sameer Sharma in recent meetings to make use of the available underground ducts or face action.

But their contention is that the rates by the ducts put in by private service providers is too steep following which the suggestion was made to form a consortium to work out a solution.

In fact, Chief Engineer says that the BSNL was game for laying a fresh duct from Telephone Bhavan, Saifabad to Masab Tank and Narayanaguda on a pilot basis for a 10-km stretch where all cables of all service providers can be inducted.

It is still in the limbo for lack of response from the service providers.

The Times of India       16.12.2010

PATNA: While the construction of roads by various agencies with fund provided the road construction department (RCD) and rural works department (RWD) has been going on despite financial constraints caused by the delay on the part of the Centre to release the required fund, CM Nitish Kumar on Wednesday directed the RCD to prepare a detailed `road maintenance policy'.

The CM was reviewing the works performed and the policy matters related to the two departments at a meeting held at the state headquarters on the day. RCD minister Nand Kishore Yadav, RWD minister Bhim Singh, chief secretary Anup Mukherjee, development commissioner K C Saha, respective departmental heads -- RWD principal secretary Shashi Shekhar Sharma and RCD secretary Pratyaya Amrit -- along with CM's secretaries Chanchal Kumar, S Siddharth and Atish Chandra participated in the review meet.

The CM told the officials concerned that the framing of the detailed maintenance policy was a must for the constant upkeep of the roads constructed in the state. Earlier, Amrit had said that the construction of all the roads required in the state would be completed by 2015.

The meet also expressed active concern over the delay on the part of the Centre in releasing the fund required to continue the construction of the roads already sanctioned.

With regard to the money pending against the RWD roads, the department has to construct 19,000 km of rural roads under Prime Minister's Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) at a cost of Rs 8,600 crore. However, the Centre had so far released only 23 per cent (or Rs 2,000 crore) of the total earmarked sum to be spent on the construction of roads for which sanction has already been given. By rule, the Centre has to release 50 per cent of the total sum against the sanctioned roads.

Incidentally, with resources of the state government, 2,500 km of PMGSY roads has already been completed, and the work has also been started on the construction of 15,000 km of such roads, which has resulted in dues worth Rs 1,000 crore payable to the state by the Centre. Consequently, the construction work has been hampered, the review meet felt, with the noting from the CM that the quality of roads under construction should be maintained.

As far as the RCD is concerned, it has completed the construction of 1,700 km of roads in the current fiscal, and by the end of this fiscal in March, the total length of the constructed roads would be 3,500 km.

Among other roads, 3,205 km of roads have been constructed at a cost of Rs 1,400 crore under CM Gram Sadak Yojana, and 2,786 km of roads at a cost of Rs 924 crore under Minimum Needs Programme, 1,346 km of roads at a cost of Rs 750 crore under Rural Infrastructure Development Programme, and 438 km of roads at a cost of Rs 199 crore under `Apki Sarkar, Apke Dwar' programme. Panchayat Bhawans have also been constructed in the Naxal-affected districts and in border districts under the same programme.