Badnawar (Dhar district, Madhya Pradesh): Upset with poor quality of road construction, local residents forced municipal council to demolish the freshly built bitumen road after 32 hours of its construction.
The incident pertains to municipal ward number 8 here where municipal council engaged a contractor to construct road from Ambedkar Square to Durga Square at the cost of Rs 10.86 lakh. Local residents claimed that road was constructed on Wednesday night and opened for traffic on Thursday morning.
Local residents who were waiting for road construction since long were happy after it was opened for traffic movement. However, their happiness was short lived. Barely 24 hours after it was opened for traffic, bitumen layers came off.
This angered residents who claimed that they received similar complaint from ward number 10 where road was constructed at the cost of Rs 9.05 lakh on the same night. The residents said contractor and his men did not remove dust from the road before laying the bitumen. “This shows that contractor and his men have no knowledge of road construction,” a resident remarked.
After receiving complaints from local residents, council pressed its team and removed asphalt and other torn off material from the road. When contacted, chief municipal officer Asha Bhandari said contractor has been asked to rebuild the road without delay. However, she denied that irregularity was committed in road construction.
Contractor Rajdeep Mathur said asphalt was brought from Varodara for road construction and it was mixed under the supervision of municipal council engineers at the plant. But there is a possibility that asphalt is of poor quality. Engineer will visit here from Varodara and check the asphalt.
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