Repair work of damaged roads underway: Hakim

Kolkata: The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has started repairing the roads that have been damaged, Mayor Firhad Hakim said on Thursday.

Hakim said that repair work will be completed within the next couple of months. It may be recalled that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had pulled up the earlier Mayor Sovan Chatterjee for not taking up repair work of roads that had been damaged during monsoon.

After becoming the new Mayor, Hakim said that repairing roads and augmenting the speed of traffic will be his priority. He held talks with senior officials of the Roads department and prepared the blueprint that will be followed to repair the roads.

Repair work was badly hit after the National Green Tribunal closed two hot mix plants of KMC, situated at Goragacha and Palmerbazar. Hakim had said that KMC will float a tender and the hot mixture will be brought from other areas.

KMC has identified 84 roads where repairing will be done. The intensity of damage is not the same everywhere. There are roads where thorough repair will be needed, while in others minor repair will serve the purpose. The engineers of the Road department of KMC have conducted surveys and accordingly, repair work is being taken up.

As rains in December, January and February are unlikely, this is the ideal time to repair roads. Once the roads are repaired, the movement of traffic will be faster, said senior civic officials.