Special squads led by top officials of the Public Works department (PWD) will carry out inspections on PWD roads under running contract so as to assess their upkeep from September 20, Minister for Public Works P. A. Mohamed Riyas has said.
The inspections will be conducted on 12,322 km of roads in all 14 districts under the running contract system for maintenance, Mr. Riyas told reporters after inaugurating the National Conference on Resilient Infrastructure (NCRI 2022) organised by the PWD’s Kerala Highway Research Institute (KHRI) and IIT-Palakkad here on Friday.
These are roads where the defect liability period (DLP) has expired but where the government has put in place a system to ensure their continued upkeep.
The ‘checking teams’ will be led by senior officers, including Secretary (PWD), Joint Secretaries, Chief Engineers and Superintending Engineers. The PWD manages about 30,000 km of roads in the State. The inspections will not be a one-off event, but a continuous process, the Minister said, adding that roads, offices and rest houses of the department will be covered.
Mr. Riyas said the government would adopt an uncompromising stand against ''wrong tendencies'' and the ''nexus'' that exists between some contractors and PWD officials. On the Vigilance report on the damaged Aluva-Perumbavoor road, he said the government will examine the report and take necessary action.
Inaugurating the two-day NCRI 2022, the Minister called for innovative and sustainable construction methods that can help roads withstand the recent phenomenon of intense rainfall spells in short periods. In many places, the volume of stormwater is beyond the drainage capacity, which leads to road damage. ''We need to look into this specifically,'' he said.
The high population and traffic density in Kerala should be factored in when designing road projects. Technologies such as full-depth reclamation (FDR, where run-down road surfaces are recycled to rebuild them) and the use of pre-cast construction materials should be adopted more widely, said Mr. Riyas.
PWD secretary Ajit Kumar presided. The two-day seminar focusses on six key areas – pavement technologies, safety and resilience of transport systems, structural resilience, climate-resilient infrastructure, resilience in infrastructure project delivery and geotechnical resilience.
