Road work shifts to a slow lane.

The inordinate delay on part of the Kerala Water Authority (KWA) to hand over 9.5 cents of land for road development is hampering development of the Peroorkada-Vazhayila corridor under the City Roads Improvement Project (CRIP), currently in the last phase.

The residents in the area are up in arms against the slow progress of the work. The KWA had completed the laying of the drinking water lines from Aruvikkara to Peroorkada following frequent bursts in the old line.

The commissioning of the busy corridor will be possible only if the KWA handed over the 9.5 cents. The land is needed for developing a four-lane carriageway in the corridor. The road is a zigzag at the point.

A transformer of the Kerala State Electricity Board here also needs to be relocated.

An official of the Thiruvananthapuram Road Development Company Ltd. (TRDCL), the concessionaire of Thiruvananthapuram-CRIP (TCRIP), said efforts to relocate the transformer had been opposed by the power utility.

The attempt to get the land commenced in 2010, during the Left Democratic Front regime. The KWA had assured a meeting convened four months ago by K. Muraleedharan, MLA, that the land would be handed over for the road work. Public Works Minister V. K. Ebrahim Kunju and senior officials of the Public Works Department, the KWA, and the Kerala Road Fund Board (KRFB) had attended the meeting.

There is no compensation to be paid as the government owned the land. The KRFB had stated that the work could be completed in a month of the KWA handing over the land. The laying of pavement tiles and installation of streetlights, as suggested by the legislator to avoid delay, were progressing as per schedule, sources said.


THE HINDU