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Rain, flood and sand-laden lorries take a toll on Manavasi road stretch in Karur district

L. Renganathan

Travellers' cup of woes overflowing

KARUR : Insensitive to the plight of the travelling public, authorities have continued to allow sand-laden lorries to ply on the already damaged road stretch at Manavasi, on the Karur-Tiruchi National Highway, compounding the woes of commuters. Once again, there was a traffic snarl as a lorry got stuck at Manavasi, not far from the area that was the centre of trouble six days ago.

The wretched road stretch, an apology for National Highway, has been creating traffic bottlenecks pretty frequently. The recent rain has exposed the stretch, unattended for repairs for quite some time. The rain and flood have washed away a significant portion of the road, leaving it badly mauled.

Even the Union Minister for Surface Transport, T. R. Baalu, had chided Highways Department officials for the bad road.

Drizzle in the past week had left the road stretch slushy and muddy, giving a harrowing time to the motorists passing the area. Three vehicles got stuck in the wet earthen trap near Manavasi six days ago, creating a chain of traffic snarls for two days.

The Highways Department moved men and material and tried to do emergency patch-up works in the affected area. But again, there were traffic bottlenecks on Saturday night in several batches as vehicles got piled up on either side of Manavasi and once again a vehicle got stuck. Vehicles took a lot of time to cross the area and some private bus operators had cancelled scheduled trips between Karur and Tiruchi.

To worsen the situation, sand lorries have been allowed to ply on the road and they carry weight far in excess of their permissible limits.

Repeatedly the authorities have been apathetic to traffic problems in the Karur-Kulithalai sector. Superintendent of Police K. Shankar worked overnight the other day to ease traffic congestion but the problematic sand lorries continued to ply.

The district administration's apathy in allowing sand mining and transportation in the past four days has exposed the inadequacy of the authorities to control the sand mining, which is compounding woes of travellers on the Karur-Tiruchi highway and at worst eating into the roads being laid repeatedly to drain the exchequer, feel the affected public.

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