BENGALURU: If everything goes as per the local civic body’s claims, the city’s roads may not be scarred by potholes in the coming years. The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) which has already started white-topping work on major city roads, with a promise to provide better road surfaces for many years, will soon have bitumen plants in the city to attend to the chronic potholes.
BBMP, which had called for tenders for the establishment of two bitumen plants in the city that can supply asphalt mix to the Palike regularly for the next five years, will issue a work order in a week to the winning bidder.
According to BBMP, the bidder will supply, instal and commission asphalt batch mix plants of 80/100 TPH capacity, with paving equipment, tippers/trucks and supply of various bituminous mixes, with operation and maintenance of the plant for 5 years in Chikkanagamangala of Anekal taluk and Kannoor village.
Praveen Lingaiah, Executive Engineer, Traffic Engineering Cell, told The New Indian Express, “The tender was approved at the government level recently, and we will issue work orders to the bidder in a week. Installation of the plants may take three months, so they will be in operation by June. We hope that for this monsoon, we will be able to attend to the potholes at the earliest.”
Despite BBMP scrapping the project in 2016, it was taken up again after Karnataka Chief Secretary Vijay Bhaskar asked Palike officials to call for a tender.