Residents of Udhagamandalam have complained that the soil dumped on one side of the recently laid Ooty-Gudalur Road near the Rohini Theatre Junction gets washed down onto the roads during rain, making the road extremely dangerous for motorists.
The stretch was laid less than a year ago along with other sections of the Ooty-Gudalur Road.
The roadwork was meant to ease traffic flow and ensure safer roads, but the work near the Rohini Theatre Junction, a km before the Fingerpost Junction, has exacerbated existing problems.
N. Shiva, a resident of Khandal, said that the Highways Department cleared a lot of earth during the course of the road construction work and heaped it onto one side of the road. Existing structures were also moved and the dumped earth was flattened as part of the work.
“However, the engineers failed to take into account that the road is a steep slope and during the rain, loose soil washes down the road and settles on top of the already slippery interlock bricks that have been laid,” said Shiva.
Slippery surface
Local residents said that motorcyclists were most at risk from meeting with an accident due to losing control of their vehicles on the slippery surface, and called on the Highways Department to look into the prospect of laying concrete on top of the soil . “It’s not just that the soil settles on top of the road, but even makes its way into surrounding homes,” said another resident.
When contacted, a senior official from the State Highways Department in the Nilgiris said that they would use machinery to flatten the land surrounding the stretch of road near the Rohini Theatre to prevent loose soil from getting washed down to the road surface.