Recarpeting tips go off-road

Ramkrishan Upadhyay

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, April 21

Recarpeting of roads in the city by “ignoring” the recommendations of the Central Road Research Institute (CRRI), New Delhi, has come under the scanner. Some organisations and residents have raised the issue and have demanded that this practice be checked.

The Second Innings Association (SIA), a group of eminent and retired persons of the city, has written to the UT Administrator, requesting him to ensure that all roads are recarpeted as per the recommendations of the CRRI.

Last year, a report submitted by the CRRI on Madhya Marg had recommended that before starting recarpeting work, the department must scrape the existing road so that the level of the road does not increase after recarpeting. The UT had engaged the CRRI to give recommendations for recarpeting Madhya Marg in a scientific way.

RK Garg, president of the Second Innings Association, said in the past few years, barring one or two, all roads had been recarpeted by just adding another layer of material without scraping these. As a result, the height of the roads had increased.

This was resulting in flooding of areas around inner roads since road gullies, meant for draining out rainwater, had been rendered useless as the height of the roads had increased. Crores of rupees spent on cleaning the road gullies had gone down the drain. The situation in some sectors was so bad that water had started entering houses.

The association has demanded that work on recarpeting of roads without scraping these should be stopped.

A special audit of roads and their strength should be carried out and the roads recarpeted in the past five years should be included in it.

He said according to the CRRI report, using “foam stabilising mix design” in place of the conventional design would not only save money, but environment too.

Manoj Kumar Bansal, Chief Engineer, MC, said the roads were scraped where ever the need was felt.

What CRRI had said  

• The original surface level of urban roads needs to be maintained to the extent possible to avoid footpath level mismatch and drainage problem
• UT should adopt more environment-friendly material for recarpeting; reuse of material taken out from existing roads should be promoted