NEW DELHI: The officials at the National Highway Authority are working on war footing to ensure that the national highway stretches are pothole-free, to avoid any mishap or inconvenience to highway users.
The pace of the work has been intensified amidst the month-long initiative of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways “Special Campaign 2” between 1st to 31st October to clear up pending items, categorised as “punch list’’, and put things in order, following which a circular was issued by NHAI. In the circular the authority stated that NHAI will hold officials liable for any fatal or serious accidents that occur as a result of poor road engineering works.
Giving update on the work status of the ongoing campaign, Alka Upadhyay, secretary MoRTH said that under the special measures to ensure that the National Highway stretches are pothole-free, out of a total of 1787 complaints from public, Parliamentarians, PMO and state governments, 1584 have already been addressed till October 29th.
In the circular, issued on October 18th, the NHAI said the authority has taken a serious view towards the dereliction of duty by the representative of NHAI/IE/AE involved in the process of issuance of the provisional certificate, thereby jeopardising the safety of users in utter disregard of the policy guidelines and provisions of the contract agreement.
“However, it has come to notice that provisional completion certificates are being issued keeping safety works such as road marking, road signages, end treatment of crash barriers in the punch list, which not only compromise the safety of users but also bring a bad name to NHAI upon the occurrence of accidents/ fatalities,” the circular said.