Kochi’s potholed roads unlikely to be restored by Onam

Stakeholders in Kochi Corporation face challenges in completing road repairs before Onam due to funding issues.

Sceptical about being able to complete patch works of damaged roads in different divisions of the Kochi Corporation before the Onam deadline due to paucity of funds and other reasons, many stakeholders are keeping their fingers crossed.

Not many contractors were taking up conventional patch works and it had to be seen whether potholes could be repaired by Onam, said Anoop Kumar A.K., an office-bearer of Kerala Government Contractors’ Association. A contractor who came forward to fill potholes in the Kochi Corporation area using, among others, cold-mix bitumen that can withstand rainy weather, slowed down the works following a court case that challenged the “payment priority” that had been accorded for the works.

The payment priority was apparently given since there was little response to tenders that were floated thrice to do patch works. It could be mainly because of the huge backlog of unpaid dues, and the delay in revising the estimate in keeping with the prevailing market rate. There is about four months delay in clearing bills of works done under the plan-funds head. The works included resurfacing of roads using paver blocks, the estimate of which had not been revised since 2016, he added.

Government contractors had recently demanded a district-level mechanism to revise the prices of raw materials needed for road and other construction works, since the prevailing rates were even below the ones fixed by the Central PWD in 2018.

A division councillor cited funds constraint in repairing roads, saying that each councillor was given ₹26 lakh per year for the purpose, irrespective of the length of roads in the division. Given the situation, MLAs too could pool in with their share of funds to do emergency repairs, he said.

Stating that many potholed roads were repaired, Mayor M. Anilkumar said efforts were under way to restore the rest of the roads from the list of such corridors submitted by the traffic police.