Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, July 20: Residents of Balhama, a remote village in North Kashmir’s Rafiabad area of Baramulla district, have expressed resentment against sub-standard macadamization of four kilometres stretch road in their area.
Residents alleged that macadamization of a road from Balham to Brahma was not carried properly by the concerned department. “Our road was black topped after nearly twenty years but authorities have not followed the rules,” Altaf Ahmad, a local, said.
After witnessing the poor work the locals stopped the work and protested against the ill practice.
Abdul Rashid, an official at PMGSY, when contacted, said: “It was actually open graded premix carpeting that means there was no macadamization and a 20mm surface of gravel was to be laid. The technique is old and is not in practice these days. We decided to lay off a 2mm sheet of macadam which we did,” he said.
He said the project was old and has been lingering on since the year 2008. “There were several issues in the project. It was old and therefore the rates were old. It was a central scheme and they refuse to alter the rates. So it was carried the way it was done,” the PMGSY official said.
He said that after they received the complaints they inspected the site. “The average thickness was nearly 2.5 which is above prescribed norm. There was nothing wrong in the work,” he claimed.
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