WB-aided road project advanced

Anantapur: Pressure from the ruling party leaders of the district, keeping in view the forthcoming elections, the State government has advanced the implementation of the World Bank-aided road maintenance project (core network) in the district by about a year.

Against the initial plans to implement the project in the third phase beginning from next financial year the government has advanced it to be taken up in the second phase itself.

Tenders

Accordingly, tenders for the project would be invited in December and works would be grounded a couple of months later.

When contacted, Superintending Engineer of Roads and Buildings Department C. Ramkishan Rao stated that roads, State highways, of 499.13 km length in the district would be taken up under the project.

Maintenance

The successful bidders would be given contracts for maintenance of selected roads for five to seven years and they were required to redesign, realign, reconstruct and re-lay the roads and maintain them for the remaining contract period.

Consultants

They would take the help of consultants appointed by the World Bank, Louis and Berger, in designing and alignment of roads, construction of bridges and free maintenance of roads for the contract period without any extra cost.

The contractors would not be allowed any cost escalation or additional payment.

The project was nothing but outsourcing of R&B work, he stated.

A team of Roads and Buildings engineers had visited Washington, New Jersey and New York states in the US in May this year to study the roads, technologies being used there and long-term performance of roads.

Experts

They also visited International Institute of Transport Engineers in Maryland and interacted with the experts there over road bridges with steel girders and height of road under bridges.

Bad roads

He stated that there were 3,200 km length of R&B roads in the district with 20 per cent of them categorised as bad roads as per their standards.

The roads likely to be covered under the project include Anantapur-Kalyanadurg-Rayadurg; Mypadu-Nellore-Bellary-Mumbai (stretch in the district); Anantapur-Tadipatri-Bhogasamudram; Anantapur-Uravakonda; Koduru-Dharmavaram; Kadiri-Hindupur; Hindupur-Somandepalli, Hindupur-Madakasira-Tumkur, Nagasamudram-Peruru and others.