Long-drawn repair makes travel on VIP Road hellish!

The highways and byways

By our Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, July 9: The VIP Road connecting Six Mile and rengi via Chachal, Barbari, Bortilla and Pathar Quarry has long been accident prone for the past four months. A road repair work that should take not more than 15 days is taking around four months now. And nobody knows when the work will be over.

 Repair of the road is going on at many stretches. And the repair has been left incomplete at most of the stretches, as though to make those who use the road suffer. A long stretch of the road from Bortilla to near Pathar Quarry has been long been unused. Simply this stretch of the road is not fit for vehicular traffic. The digging of the drains in one side of the road was going on till a few weeks back. Now though no digging activities go on in that stretch, water has got accumulated there as the stretch is low-lying. The monsoon rains add to the woes.

The repair of that stretch of the road, according to the PWD, cannot be completed due to paucity of stone chips and sand. Though the PWD says that the repair of the stretch of the road will be over in two months, the assurance cannot be taken at its face value. For the department can complete the work subject to the availability of stone chips and sand. The moot question is: will the construction material be available soon so as to let the department complete the work in two months?

Talking to this reporter, a contractor who does not want his me to be disclosed said: “We need to buy stone at Rs 10 which we bought at Rs 2 earlier. We’re at the receiving end in the blame game between the PWD and the Forest Department. Since there are rains, digging takes much of the time. When we block the drain for digging the water accumulates and overflows to the other side of the road. We’ve to spend much of the time by pumping out the water that gets accumulated.”

The road has been made one-way at that very stretch. However, movement of vehicles on the one-way is far from being smooth as there is a big crater at Bortilla. This stretch experiences the plying heavy trucks on it every day. The situation of the road gets worse in every passing day.

On the scarcity of stone chips, the contractor said: “We’ve procured stones in advance, fearing scarcity. If stone chips are not made available even in two months hence, we can continue our work with the stock we’ve.”