Rain exposes poor construction of road in Ludhiana's Model Town

Kuldip Bhatia

Ludhiana, January 9

A spell of rain that lashed the city during last two days has laid bare the poor workmanship, use of substandard material, lack of supervision on the part of senior officials and execution of work in non-conducive weather conditions in recarpeting of main road in Model Town from Mintgumry Chowk to Baba Deep Singh Gurdwara. The work was carried out by the Ludhiana Improvement Trust (LIT) on behalf of the Municipal Corporation only about a month ago.

Pitiable condition of road in Sarabha Nagar

• Residents of G-Block (behind Welcome Palace) in Sarabha Nagar has lamented that a stretch of road has been in a pitiable condition for the past several months posing huge risk to road users.
• While a part of road has been broken, a huge boulder lies just alongside the turn of the broken portion of road which could cause an accident any time.
• A resident of the area, KS Grewal, said complaints lodged with MC officials and the area councillor have failed to evoke any response.

The so-called newly recarpeted road, involving an expenditure of Rs 2.27 crore, presents a pathetic look with huge patches of loose gravel, deep depressions and peeled off upper layer in most of the stretch making it clear that the public money spent on the project has been a total wastage.

A city-based social activist and secretary of the Council of RTI Activists, Arvind Sharma, who claims to have cautioned the LIT officials even earlier that poor material was being used and carpeting of road was being carried out during night in extremely cold weather, has lodged a complaint with the Director, Local Bodies, Punjab and Chief Vigilance Officer (CVO) of Local Government Department, Punjab, to hold a probe with regard to quality of material used and workmanship of the project.

He claimed in the complaint that he had taken up the matter with senior LIT officials many a times about substandard and below specification material being used by the contractor, and especially that the road was being carpeted during night in extremely cold weather conditions, which were not conducive for carpeting of roads.

“But may be due to their affinity with the contractor, the LIT officials failed to act and the contractor got away with recarpeting the main road in a posh area which could not withstand vagaries of weather even for a month,” observed Sharma, while demanding a high-level probe into workmanship and quality test of material used in recarpeting of road. The officials found negligent in carrying out their supervisory duty also ought to be proceeded against, he added.

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