Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

PWD engineers challenge claim made by Isaac

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: State committee of the Kerala PWD Graduate Engineers’ Association has challenged the claims of Finance Minister T.M. Thomas Isaac that corruption in the Public Works Department was the root cause of the badly damaged condition of the roads in the State. In a statement issued here on Monday, the Association alleged that the Minister was presenting wrong figures on the amounts allocated for road maintenance to cover up the failures of the Government and to create misunderstanding among the public on the issue.

The Minister had stated that the Government intended to spend Rs.2,042 crore for road works this year, but out of that only Rs.311 crore had been earmarked for rebuilding the surface and maintenance of the damaged roads. This included Rs.158 crore sanctioned for the PWD and Rs.153 crore allocated for the panchayat roads. Out of the Rs.318.67 crore allocated in the State budget for road repairs to the PWD, Rs.160 crore will have to be spent on heavy maintenance and only the remaining Rs.158.67 crores will be available for repairs, the statement said.

According to Association, the amount of Rs.311 crore would be inadequate for repairing the nearly 20,000 km roads under the PWD and the nearly 40,000 km roads under the three-tier local bodies. The remaining amount in the Rs.2,042 crore mentioned by the Minister had been earmarked for the construction of roads under various projects.

The insistence of the Finance Department that road repair works could be undertaken only by strictly adhering to the “outdated” PWD codes and manuals framed in the 1950s was another reason for the delays in undertaking the road repair works. The department was also curbing the powers of the PWD engineers in the name of “corruption,” the statement said.

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