Urban News

Giving details of the plan here, Mayor M Subramanian, said, “Keeping in mind the state of the civic body-maintained roads in the metropolis, the government has allocated a whopping Rs 60 crore for re-laying all the battered roads.”

Besides, the Corporation has also made a fresh allocation of about Rs 75 crore (pooled from its capital fund) to re-lay the damaged roads, Subramanian informed.

Since the rainy season was likely to be over by the third week of December, re-laying of all roads (bus route, interior and concrete roads in slums) would begin by the end of this month and would be completed by March, he added.

The government’s special grant of Rs 60 crore, would be utilised to re-lay about 97 km of 154 bus route roads and 50 km of 112 interior roads.

On the other hand, utilising the fresh allocation of Rs 75 crore, 778 interior roads, 44 bus route roads and 224 concrete roads through slums, would be re-laid completely, the Mayor announced.

The deadline for the completion of the road re-laying work, March 2011, is quite significant, given that the Assembly elections are due in May.

Not half of allocated sum spent:

The corporation’s announcement of the Rs 135-crore plan to improve the battered city roads on Friday was at best a knee-jerk reaction to the public ire. This was evident from the fact that the civic body had spent less than half of the money allocated this year, for relaying the city roads.

Since April this year, the Corporation had spent only Rs 37 crore out of the total allocated amount of Rs 86 crore.