Sub-standard road work peeves Kamjong
Source: The Sangai Express

Imphal, November 27 2009: People of Kamjong and surrounding villages have been dismayed by utter lack of quality in the construction of culvert and development of road from Kamjong headquarters to Grihang village .

Though the development work of the road also known as Huimin Thana Road was included as a project of estimated cost of around Rs two crores under SPA, the local villagers quite dissastisfied with the way the work was executed.

The road was first developed by Japanese soldiers during second World War.

The road connecting Kamjong and Grihang in Ukhrul district

Representatives of Kamjong Village Authority, Kamjong Development Committee, Kamjong Katamnaolong, Eastern Tangkhul Students' Union, Sambulong, Raizanlong and Raizanlong JAC together with media persons inspected the road development work today.

Development work on the road began in the last part of 2008.Labourers working on the road left their work site about two months back saying that it was finished.

Although there should be 30 culverts along the 15 Kms long road, only 18 culverts were seen constructed.

Absence of quality in the constructed culverts was also glaringly visible.

Rather than building the culverts using RCC slabs, the contractor(s) was/were using ordinary round culverts.

As if the local villagers would know nothing, the railings of the culverts were made by piling up stones and coating the tops with cement mixture.

Although the culverts are only three/four months old, some culverts were seen dipping below their levels.

The sub-standard culverts would be quite risky during raining season as the main road was the main link to Burma road used for transporting heavy timber.

Against the project guideline of laying shingles along the road for around 6 kms from Kamjong Hqs, red earth obtained from hill-slopes was used.

Even as expansion of the road was one of the project proponent, no expansion was made at large portions of the road.

There were signs of the contractor trying to make the road look expanded by clearing road-side grasses and shrubs.

At some portions, even earth levelling work was not done.

Going by the way the project was executed, there is no room for spending more than Rs 20 lakhs at the most notwithstanding the fact that the estimated cost of the project was Rs 2 crores.

On being investigated by the local villagers, it was found that the contractor had encashed bills of Rs 1.30 crore.

Taking strong exception to such treacherous fraudulence, the local villagers sought attention of the Chief Minister and the Works Minister to black list the contractor so as to check misuse of public fund in future.

They also demanded to re-execute the project after entrusting it to a credible contractor.