Tripura Mulls Handing Over Road Maintenance To Private Players

Tripura Mulls Handing Over Road Maintenance To Private Players

Agartala: The State Government is mulling the option to hand over maintenance of all State roads to private hands and a tender in this regard is likely to be floated shortly. PWD chief engineer Dipak Kumar Das hinted to the reporters that necessary work in this regard has already started.

It is learnt that the department has decided to go ahead with the privatization process after Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb promised to take steps to maintain roads in good condition throughout the year.

The chief engineer informed that if the recommendations are accepted, a tender will be called once in 3 to 5 years and the agency which gets the tender will take care of the road.

He said if any small defect is repaired immediately the condition of the road will not deteriorate and cost of maintenance will be less.

There are 11,500 km roads under the State PWD at present, except the roads of PMGSY project, which is under the contracting agencies as they have the responsibility of repairing them for 5 years. The whole distance of 11,500 kms of roads could not be repaired in time due to financial reasons. Hence the major roads, where vehicular movement is heavy, are been given more importance.

Dipak Kumar Das informed that according to the guidelines of Ministry of Road Transport, the repairing of roads costs around Rs 30-40 thousand for each km every year. The cost of repairing a single lane is 20-25 lakh and 30-40 lakh for a double lane.

There will be a requirement of Rs 50 crore for repairing a total distance of 11,500 km every year. The PWD has been creating cluster, after identifying the roads, for repairing them throughout the year and separate tenders will be called for each cluster. The roads won’t deteriorate too much with this technique and new employment.

Also Read: TRIPURA NEWS

Top Headlines

No stories found.
Sentinel Assam
www.sentinelassam.com