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Himachal Bad Roads: Questions have often been raised regarding the quality of road construction in Himachal Pradesh. Even new roads break within a few days. However, apart from the National Highways, the PWD departments often lose track of the latter. No action is taken against the contractors.
Una. In Himachal Pradesh, you must have often seen such cases, when a newly constructed road starts crumbling within a few days of its construction. The latest case is from Una district, where the National Highway was uprooted just a week after tarring. The villagers now protested against this and also raised questions on the functioning of the National Highway Authority.
Actually, tarring was done on the Chandigarh-Dharamshala National Highway at Una district headquarters a week ago and now this tarring has been uprooted. With the breakdown of the road, serious questions have started being raised about the quality of the construction work. Local shopkeepers and passers-by say that there was no problem in the road before and it was sparkling, but suddenly crores of rupees were spent on tarring, but the construction was of poor quality and now within a few days the crust of the highway started peeling off.
On the other hand, National Highway Authority officials have stopped the payment to the contractor and have assured further action after quality check. Shopkeeper Chandrabhushan, Shubham Saini and Ujagar Singh, among others, said that there was no special need for tarring the road. But the patchwork could not last even for two days and the road started breaking from the new place. People alleged that government money had been wasted.
NHAI SDO Rajesh Sharma confirmed that flaws have come to light in the construction work, due to which the payment process of the contractor has been stopped. He says that a detailed investigation of the quality of the road is being done and necessary action will be taken after the investigation report comes. It is noteworthy that people are continuously troubled by bad roads in the state and when construction is done, the quality is not good. Recently, the tarring in Theog was also uprooted after a few days and then the matter made a lot of headlines.
