THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A key road in General Education Minister V Sivankutty’s Nemom constituency is better off as an off-roading trail, say locals. Riddled with potholes, which keep increasing with every passing monsoon, widening of the Thirumala-Thrikkannapuram road has been under consideration for the past 20 years.
All these years, the 3.6km-long stretch, which connects several wards to the Thiruvananthapuram-Nagercoil highway, has been marked for widening — from around 8m to 15m. But, with the project getting tangled in red tape, people have been facing the music.
Bhaskaran Nair, a resident, said he has parked his car at a plot a few metres from his house due to the bad condition of the road just outside his house. The senior citizen adds that it has become impossible for two-wheeler riders to navigate the stretch without incident.
“Good road infrastructure is important for businesses to flourish. But given the condition of this road, people tend to avoid it,” a local shopowner said. With e-commerce and online deliveries already eating into revenue, he says that rent, and not business, remains the only constant. “Several businesses have moved from the area.”
“Accidents are a daily occurrence. Two-wheeler riders suffer the most, but such incidents never get reported,” say auto-rickshaw drivers. “Besides the physical toll that motorists endure, is the damage to vehicles. Most of us are helpless when passengers ask us to avoid potholes.” Some residents complain that their legislator rarely visits the constituency.
However, Sivankutty’s office denied most of the allegations. “Although the project was taken up 20 years ago, land acquisition was completed only in the last 18 months. We expect the road to be completed by December,” an official said.
Road-widening activity has picked up, with construction of the retaining wall progressing from Thrikkannapuram, say locals. “With the assembly election due next year, the work has now covered over a kilometre. The land acquired for widening is now used by people to park vehicles and even dispose of work debris,” a resident said.
Meanwhile, authorities plan to raise the road, but shopowners are concerned that this will lead to waterlogging along the sides. The slow progress has evidently been exacerbated by lack of coordination among government departments. KSEB and PWD officials have been trading blame for delays on their part.
“Work is progressing at a very slow pace. People are willing to cooperate, but the response from authorities has been slack, especially with regard to work on the drainage system,” said Thrikkannapuram ward councillor Jayalakshmi P S. The damage to byroads as a result of the widening project should also be rectified in a time-bound manner, she added.