Incomplete roads - A ‘concrete’ trouble for citizens
| Date :06-Jul-2020 |
Staff Reporter ;
Incomplete concrete road works are indeed a classic example of perception versus reality. The project, a dream of city fathers, now stands reduced to continuous pain for the affected populace that is silently bearing the brunt of reality. The harsh impact of reality is degraded road surface that Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) has not bothered to even repair to facilitate smooth movement of vehicles. Take example of Manish Nagar, the new suburb to Southern side of city that fast emerged as new development hub where NMC decided to lay concrete roads.
Two long stretches were selected simultaneously and work started with full gusto and contractors laid the base for new concrete roads. Since the time work started for citizens using the patch faced numerous problems owing to shrunk pathway and damaged tar road on the other side. As the two roads connect to Besa and Beltarodi that has seen emergence of new residential settlement these two stretches provided easier connectivity to developed part of city.
At present one can barely drive through the two main roads, each about 1.5 km long and having good width that catered to nearly 5,000 plus population that criss-crossed the two carriageway on daily basis. Now, one of the concrete road, it is on way ahead of new Manish Nagpur railway overbridge (RoB) and tunnel is complete on one side but due to lockdown work stopped midway. The contractor has not bothered to restart the work to complete ramps and affix paver blocks to enable regular and easy to use of the said corridor. The real problem is adjacent tar road that was abandoned by authorities since it was to be relaid as concrete road. Now due to stoppage of work the condition of tar road is pretty worse and one can find remains of what once was a good carriageway.
As the traffic on the carriageway is good in number, people have to daily bear with the jerks and negotiate the entire patches that are full of potholes and exposed stones. The condition on other stretch that takes off from Manish Nagar Railway gate till Rudra T-point is even worse. This work of concretisation started a bit late that the one on other stretch of Manish Nagar and hence got caught in lockdown. While one side is occupied by incomplete concrete road the other side the tar road was neglected and due to continuous movement of traffic including heavy truck huge craters developed on the stretch in no time. Let alone driving one could even barely walk on this road stretch.
Another problem with this road stretch is that the concrete road was being constructed in patches to be joined later by affixing paver blocks. However due to lockdown as work came to standstill even the temporary blocks create for curing were not removed thereby rending the portion useless in present circumstances. Given the precarious financial condition of NMC, one does not know when the work on these two stretches of Manish Nagar is going to take off. Till then citizens have to blame their fate for having to be dependent on these stretches for their daily travel.