City concrete roads may see drains, pavements soon

City concrete roads may see drains, pavements soon

Mangalore Today News Network

Mangaluru, Aug 29,2015 : faced with multi pronged serious criticism for constructing concrete roads without either shoulder drains or footpaths, the MCC - Mangaluru City Corporation seems  decided to get ready to  build these on some concrete roads in the city soon.

The  MC Corporation’s attempt to get the drains and pavements constructed en-masse did not attract contractors, the MCC is likely to split the work into pieces worth less than Rs. 50 lakh and award the same to many contractors. This, on the one hand, would attract many contractors and on the other, would speed up the work, said Deepak Poojari, Chairman of Standing Committee on Town Planning and Improvement, MCC.

He that the issue is likely to come up before the MCC Council meet on August 29,  and get the approval. Once it is approved, the corporation would invite bids for construction, totalling for about 10 km stretch of concrete roads, he said. Since there were only a handful of contractors who are eligible to undertake works worth over Rs. 1 crore, there had been lukewarm response for earlier invitations to bid for construction of drains and footpaths. 

During a road safety committee meeting held a couple of months back, social activist G. Hanumanth Kamath had pointed out that big contractors were not interested in undertaking piece works of building drains and pavements. He had urged the Corporation to award the work to small contractors by splitting the same.He said while constructing drains and pavements, the contractors would also have to take care about utility lines—water, electricity and telephone—that pass beneath.

Besides constructing drains and pavements, there is also proposal to improve important road junctions in the city. The junction improvement is expected to smoothen traffic flow as well as offer convenient crossings for pedestrians. Though about Rs. 90 crore are available under a category called the FAR funds, about Rs. 25 crore are expected to be spent for all these works soon.