BHUBANESWAR: Even as the Centre has set a target to provide all-weather connectivity to all the habitations by March 2019, as many as 11,204 habitations of the State are without pucca roads under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY).
With barely one month of the current financial year left, the State Government has to construct about 1,700 km rural road under the flagship infrastructure programme to meet the annual target.
The Ministry of Rural Development has set a physical target of 6,200 km of rural road construction for the State in the current fiscal. The achievement so far is 4,500 km and this has benefited 1,021 habitations.
The Ministry has requested the State Government to speed up the work to achieve the annual target. In a letter to Chief Secretary AP Padhi, Union Secretary in the Ministry Amarjeet Sinha said the State Government has achieved 66 per cent of the target by January 2017 as against the national achievement of 69 per cent.
“Availability of financial resources and their timely release to the State remains a top priority for the Ministry. Let me assure you that there are adequate financial resources to support accelerated implementation of PMGSY in your State,” Sinha said.
The present situation calls for a rigorous review of all on-going contracts at the level of programme implementation unit (PIU) to ensure that the prescribed target is achieved, he added.
However, Odisha’s achievement in the rural road construction is far more better than many other states. States like Chhattisgarh and Gujarat have completed 26.48 per cent and 27.73 per cent respectively while Rajasthan has achieved 19 per cent of the annual target.
Since the inception of PMGSY in 2000, the State Government has constructed over 39,050 km of rural road connecting 17,630 habitations with an expenditure of about `12,000 crore.