ROURKELA: The Rourkela Municipal Corporation (RMC) seems to have no immediate plan for underground cable ducting even as erratic positioning of electric and telephone poles continues to cause public nuisance and accidents.
While hanging overhead power wires present an ugly picture, there is a constant fear of charged power wires getting snapped. Sources said provisions are being made for underground cable ducting under the Smart City Phase 2 project for the remaining five km stretch of the Rourkela main road from UditNagar to Bisra Square. Work on 27 other roads with total length of 22 km is underway.
Underground cable ducting, they said, is getting laid for important roads of the posh Civil Township, Hanuman Vatika bypass road, Mahtab Road and connecting roads between the main road and Mahtab Road, but there is no immediate plan to implement the underground cabling project as it involves huge cost factor.
Former chairman of the erstwhile Rourkela Municipality Ramesh Chandra Bal said, these poles were erected haphazardly decades back and with widening of roads, some posts now stand almost on middle of the roads at many places to permanently block the passageway and increase accidents.
“Six years after declaration of Rourkela as Smart City, urgent replacement of these poles with underground cabling has become a necessity,” Bal said. The situation is grim in interior lanes of the thickly populated Basanti Colony, Chhend Colony, Panposh and other residential areas.