The Greater Cochin Development Authority (GCDA) has sought the State government’s revised administrative sanction for the ₹2.5-crore work to renovate ill-maintained and heavily encroached upon footpaths and damaged drains, on the arterial Kaloor-Kadavanthra Road.
The sanction accorded by the government in 2018 has lapsed. The reason being cited is that the agency did not have an administrative committee for over a year. Its new chairman K. Chandran Pillai, a former MP, is slated to assume charge on Monday.
The GCDA had floated tenders and shortlisted the lowest bidder. In the absence of an administrative committee, the agency was not in a position to finalise the tender. It is in this context that revised administrative sanction has been sought. The footpath renovation work would mainly be on the eastern side of the Kaloor-Kadavanthra Road and on the western side of the Kathrikadavu-Kaloor corridor, said official sources.
Slack maintenance had resulted in a considerable extent of footpath becoming weed-infested or being encroached upon, within a few years of the road being commissioned about 15 years ago. The slabs of drains too suffered damage over time, posing danger to pedestrians. Many drains got clogged with garbage and debris.
The GCDA has not envisaged measures to keep encroachers and illegally parked vehicles at bay. While both sides of the Kadavanthra-Kathrikadavu corridor were resurfaced a few years ago, resurfacing of the Kathrikadavu-Kaloor stretch is pending. This has resulted in severe undulations in areas where the tarred surface meet the portions where concrete paver blocks were laid, posing danger to motorists.
An estimate of repair work had to be taken while resurfacing would follow suit, said the sources, adding that frequent trenching by the Kerala Water Authority (KWA) worsened the road’s condition on the Kathrikadavu-Kaloor stretch.
Commuters have also been demanding widening of the two-lane bridge at Kathrikadavu since the bridge is flanked by four-lane roads on both sides.
