An expert panel comprising three chief engineers from the Public Works Department (PWD) has been constituted to help the team of structural engineering experts from IIT-Chennai who are engaged in restoring the damaged Palarivattom flyover, Minister for Public Works G. Sudhakaran has said.
The panel was constituted after the IIT experts detailed in their 1,000-page report the major damage that the four-lane flyover sustained was due to improper design and inferior quality of execution.
While faults in project execution had been reported, improper design and supervision for such a structure located on a busy NH Bypass was unheard of, the Minister told The Hindu.
Necessary repair works on the surface (such as replacement of expansion joints and resurfacing) will be completed this month. Cracks and other problems reported on the pier caps and other areas would be tended to later in the year, over a two-month period, based on yet another voluminous report that the IIT team was expected to submit, said Mr. Sudhakaran.
He added that the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau (VACB) probe that the government ordered was not at all a political inquiry. It was aimed at unearthing corruption and to find the scale of apathy of KITCO and RBDCK officials.
“I have instructed engineers engaged in constructing Vyttila and Kundannoor flyovers on NH Bypass to be doubly cautious and to ensure supervision. A five-member committee will recommend ways to further streamline traffic flow at Vyttila in second phase development works of the junction,” he added.
Earlier in the day, Mr Sudhakaran posted on his Facebook page that a few serving and retired officials (of agencies which associated with the flyover construction) were trying to mislead people about steps that the State government has taken following the detection of damage to the flyover. They would have to pay an irreparable price for the same, his post said.
Monitoring works
Official sources said the team of experts from IIT-Chennai headed by Alagusundara Moorthy would continuously monitor works under way to restore the flyover.
In the meantime, activists of the CPI took out a people’s march to the flyover on Monday, demanding that the government blacklist the construction company which built the flyover.
Call for action
“An objective probe must be conducted into how the structure suffered damage within a year of being built in 2016. All unscrupulous stakeholders who connived with malpractices must be brought to book. They must be made to compensate for the suffering of the people. Neither KITCO nor RBDCK can wash its hands off the responsibility,” said the party’s district secretary P. Raju.