Thiruvananthapuram: Road restoration estimate peaks for sewerage work

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The city corporation has to dig into savings from stormwater drainage projects to meet the escalated cost for road restoration charges as part of the sewerage works under Atal mission for rejuvenation and urban transformation (Amrut). The estimate amount required for a road restoration work related to one of the projects had recently peaked from Rs 16 lakh to Rs 3.74 crore, as reported by the Kerala water authority (KWA).
In the recently held state-level technical committee meeting, KWA has reported that the amount for road restoration as per technical sanction related to supplying and laying transmission main at Akkulam to connect stilling chamber at Bypass Junction to pumping station at Akkulam was Rs 16.87 lakh. However, as per the actual site conditions, Rs 3.74 crore was required for road restoration.

The work has recorded 37% completion. With the increase in road restoration charges, the sanctioned amount was revised from Rs 6.73 crore to 10.03 crore. It has been decided that the corporation shall meet the additional cost from the savings made from 18 stormwater drainage projects, which have been completed.
Between December 2018 and March 2019, an amount of Rs 15.51 crore had to be spent on execution of projects under water supply and sewerage and a major share was spent on meeting road cutting and restoration charges.
Around 24 works, including laying of transmission main and sewer networks, replacing existing lines, rehabilitation of sewer lines and supply and laying of sewer main, would require road cutting and restoration under Amrut, including the newly constructed NH.
Of these, 13 works will require cutting of BM&BC road, which was estimated to cost Rs 5,396.29 per sq m as per the revised rates in 2019.
The newly-laid NH road was also included in the list and there are three works for which road cutting needs to be done on NH. This work includes supplying and laying 600mm DI pumping main from pump at Edathara to Sewage treatment plant at Muttathara.
Water resources minister Roshy Augustine recently told the assembly that delay in road cutting sanction from NHAI was one of the reasons for the failure in completing projects within the timeline.
The project officials said that sanction has now been received for almost all the works. Public works department had fixed the rates for road cutting based on Delhi schedule of rates 2016and all the rates for various categories of road went up by three to four times the old rates.
KWA managing director had reported that the time-bound completion of many pipeline works of KWA had been obstructed due to non-availability of road cutting permissions from PWD.
The government constituted an empowered committee to ensure that unwanted delays at the field level are avoided and projects are executed in time.