Puttur: Shiradi Ghat Road Fast Slipping Back to Square One!
Daijiworld Media Network - Puttur (SP)
Puttur, Jun 21: It has only been about two weeks since vehicles were allowed to ply on Shiradi ghat section of the national highway 48. The public works department and the union minister for road transport had patted themselves on the back for the high quality maintained in restoring and partially rebuilding this part of the national highway, by asphalting and laying concrete interlocks at several bends on the ghat section which were prone to heavy damage, within a comparatively short period.
The asphalting of the road has started peeling off, laying bare the fakeness of the claim of high quality. The concerned had claimed to have spent Rs 5 crore for asphalting 11 kms of the road and another 22 crores for a stretch of 26 kms. However, the roads would have not cracked up as it has now, and rain water would not have got seeped and stored in these cracks, if so much sum had been actually spent. The drivers of buses moving on this road fear, that the road might become unmotorable within a couple of weeks, if the same trend continues. The road is facing highest danger from thousands of heavily loaded ore trucks that make use of this stretch to reach Mangalore.
The fact that exhaustive repairs and restoration works had been taken up by blocking traffic on the road for nearly eight months, had given rise to high expectations among the people about the quality of this road. The elation of the people who were tired of undertaking treacherous jounrey through the damaged roads of Charmadi ghat to reach Bangalore, at the time this road was opened for traffic, will perhaps be shortlived. What can they expect from a road that was claimed to have a long life of three to five years, crumbling under traffic pressure within two weeks?