Chandigarh, April 23 -- Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann on Wednesday launched 'Sadak Dhaancha Vikas Milni', a first-of-its-kind initiative aimed at ensuring quality construction of roads in the state
Addressing the gathering during the interactive session, the Chief Minister said that there is a stretch of 64,878 km of link roads in the state, and the state government is starting a project of repair and upgradation of 18,944 km of these roads on which Rs 3459.95 crore will be spent.
The Chief Minister said that these link roads are the arteries of economic growth in the state as they help the people residing in rural areas to commute on one hand and give impetus to trade and business on the other.
Mann underlined the need for the construction of these roads at the earliest, as a majority of them have remained unattended even after passing their life of six years. He said that the company constructing the road will be responsible for the maintenance of these roads for five years.
The Chief Minister said that corruption in road construction is unwarranted and undesirable. He claimed that earlier, there were "shares of those in higher and lower echelons of power in the tenders for construction of roads".
"In such a dismissive situation, the contractors had to compromise with the quality of roads," he added, assuring that now, this "corrupt practice has come to an end" and the contractors must focus on the quality of roads to be constructed. Mann said that his predecessors "never paid heed to the words of the public because they only listened to their relatives".
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.