CHENNAI: The DMK’s promise, given in its manifesto released for the upcoming parliamentary elections, to provide one crore jobs to youth, who have completed class X, in maintaining the national highways, has raised several eyebrows.
Though the manifesto, released on Tuesday by party president M K Stalin, has not explicitly mentioned the quantum of jobs assured for maintaining the national highways running across the state or the country, a close look at the facts related to the national highways reveals that providing even five per cent of jobs (five lakhs) promised in manifesto appears to be impossible even across India.
According to official records of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways as on November 30 last year, the total length of national highways across the country is 1.31 lakh km, out of which over 45 per cent roads (mostly four and six lanes) are maintained by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) while 55 per cent of roads (mostly two lanes and multi-lanes) are maintained by the National Highways wing of respective state highway departments.
The State Construction and Maintenance Wing manual suggest that on an average, one worker will be engaged for maintaining 5.5 to 7 km road.
However, the DMK’s manifesto has promised to provide jobs for one crore youth in the maintenance of the national highways running for about 1.31 lakh km. This means that on an average, 76 workers will have to be appointed for maintaining every one km of the NH which may be 700 times higher than the ratio followed by the State.
Interestingly, the Railways that has 1.21-lakh-km track length, has a total staff strength of mere 13.5 lakh. This is despite the fact that the railway tracks require maintenance on an hourly basis.
Given that four-lane and six-lane roads which were built since early 2000 were either developed under Engineering Procurement and Construction (EPC) and Public-Private Partnership (PPP) modes, the contractor has been entrusted with the task of maintaining the roads for about 20 to 35 years.
“Those roads which are developed using the public funds in early 2000 have also been converted into toll roads and their maintenance has been handed over to private companies. To take over the maintenance of highways, toll gates had to be closed for which every state government may have to settle somewhere Rs 25,000 crore to Rs 35,000 crore for contractors. Appointing road workers is nearly impossible,” said a retired national highways official.
During the DMK regime, 10,000 road workers were appointed for maintaining 58,326 km road network of the State that comprises State highways (11,830 km), major district roads (11,638 km) and other district roads (34,858 km). The national highways run for about 6,741.5 km which includes 3496 km roads maintained by the NHAI.
“On an average during the DMK regime, one worker was appointed for maintaining 5.8 km road. If we go by the same yardstick, a maximum of 1,200 to 1,500 persons may get the job of maintaining the highways in the State,” the official said.