The Deccan Chronicle 05.10.2010
Rain blamed for road work delayOct. 4: The Chennai mayor, Mr M. Subramanian, has blamed the recent spell of rains for the delay in re-laying of roads in the city. “The city had received an unusual rainfall last month and steps are underway to speed up the pending works,” he said. “Zonal officials and engineers have been instructed to complete the pending works before the onset of monsoon.”
He added that inspections to improve the roads have been planned across the city and urged councillors to be more proactive in developing the infrastructure in their wards. Thanks to the uninterrupted traffic and rains, Chennai roads are getting damaged as soon as they are re-laid.
With the traffic flow surging on daily basis, increasing the wear and tear of roads, assurance of road quality has become difficult for engineers. Experts have time and again raised concerns about the quality of the city roads that happens to handle huge traffic.
Change in climate, escalation in construction material costs, lack of coordination with the public while laying roads, inadequate time given for road setting, sewer overflow and periodical digging of roads by other agencies are the serious problems that the city is facing, said sources.
A senior corporation official said intermittent rain has played spoilsport and had delayed re-laying works. “Infrastructure projects worth `70 crore that would save Chennai from flooding during rains and also ease traffic congestion could not be taken up in the past two months because of the rains,” the official said.
The mayor added that tenders for work amounting to several crores of rupees had been readied but the corporation employees and contractors are unable to start the work because of the wet weather conditions.
