Most roads have remote chances of repair this monsoon

VARANASI: Though the district administration has fixed June 30 as the deadline for repair of dug-up roads, this deadline seems impossible to meet.
On June 20, divisional commissioner AK Upadhyaya and district magistrate Ravindra had held a meeting with the officials of the UP Jal Nigam, Varanasi Nagar Nigam (VNN) and Public Works Department (PWD). During this meeting, the officials were directed to make war-foot efforts for the repair of all roads that had been dug up for laying pipelines under trans-Varuna sewage, storm water drainage and other projects.The agencies were also instructed to provide day to day progress report to the DM.
As heavy rainfall was registered in this district till June 23 and the repair work suffered as ditches got filled with rain water. But, even after the break in monsoon, no `war-foot' effort was visible at any work site to ensure that all ditches were filled to complete the process of black topping. For storm water drainage project, the UPJN had dug up roads at 25 points in cis-Varuna localities. Out of them, roads had been repaired only at 10 points before the monsoon became active in the region.
Under the trans-Varuna sewage project, work of laying pipelines was started at 21 points. When the district administration set the deadline for the closure of ditches and proper repair of roads, the work was in progress only on Azamgarh roads. Some roads like Shivpur by-pass, Shivpur Central Jail, Panchkroshi, Ashok Vihar and Nataniadai roads had already been repaired but the first spell of rainfall exposed the quality of work undertaken. Those roads caved in at several places.
When ADM (city) MP Singh was contacted on Monday, he made it clear that the agencies had to complete all repair work by June 30. As the commissioner and DM are monitoring these works personally, the junior officials are not ready to comment on the course of action against agencies concerned in case they failed to complete the work on scheduled time. But, if sources are to be believed, the magistrates, who have been assigned to undertake physical verification on a regular basis, have mentioned only remote possibilities of completion of work in the scheduled time in their fresh reports submitted to the DM.
On the other hand, in the name of repair works, agencies concerned have dumped the construction material by roadsides. Thus, commuters are facing a harrowing time, particularly after Monday afternoon's rainfall as most of these roads have become slippery.