Srinagar, Oct. 27: Divisional Commissioner for Kashmir, Vijay Kumar Bidhuri, said on Friday that the government was attempting to rush and finish the road macadamization project before the winter season arrived.
Speaking with Greater Kashmir, Bidhuri said that in order to guarantee that the macadamization process will go at a rapid rate and be finished on schedule after the G20 meeting, the administration picked up speed.
We have started significant initiatives for the creation of smart cities in our Shehr-e-Khaas, as you may have also seen,” he stated.
Bidhuri said that the municipality normally has control over the city’s interior roadways and that they had already created a work plan for them.
Our objective is to do this before winter arrives in order to prevent any issues. In a month, there will be a substantial decrease in temperature, which might interfere with the macadamization process. Consequently, we are giving priority to the timely completion of key road macadamization,” he said.
The Divisional Commissioner did concede, however, that the smart city initiatives must have some unfinished business that has to be taken care of as well.
There are certain places that need attention, but we aim to keep everyone as inconvenience-free as possible. Therefore, in order to avoid disruption to the public, we are finishing the work in stages,” he said.
Given the continued bright weather, Chief Engineer Rafiq Ahmad Rafiq of the Roads and Building (R&B) Department, Kashmir, informed Greater Kashmir that they have finished macadamizing a significant amount of the roads this season and hope to push for more.
“We offer two or three different kinds of macadamization projects, such as two- or three-season upgrading projects and an annual programme called city and town resurfacing,” the speaker said.
Another initiative, according to Rafiq, was to “resurface roads in all areas under their jurisdiction” in order to eliminate potholes.
“We covered approximately 800 to 900 km of roads in the annual programme,” he said.
According to Rafiq, they set a goal of 3700 km of roads for macadamization under the three-year NABARD initiatives.
“We completed this project last year, covering 1500 km of roads, and we will finish it this year as well,” he said.
According to Rafiq, the department set a goal of 1693 km for the yearly macadamization campaign, of which 1550 km have been macadamized so far.
With bright days coming, “we may push more and achieve the target,” he said.
Regarding some roads in cities and towns that were left unfinished, Rafiq said that certain places were left unfinished because NABARD would eventually authorise their macadamization or other projects would take priority.
