GUWAHATI, Aug 23 - The residents of Government Press Road at Bamunimaidam, where the State�s premier security press under the Directorate of Printing and Stationery and the historic Gopal Krishna Than are located, and the motorists using the road have to face hardships regularly while using the road because of its construction left incomplete.
The improvement work on the arterial road, connecting Barnachal, Milanpur and Jyotinagar (West), which was taken up by the PWD (Roads) under the Guwahati Development Department (GDD) for the year 2017-18, still remains incomplete.
A resident of the area, Sailen Bordoloi, said laying of ICBP (interlocking concrete block pavement) on the road is yet to be completed.
�The condition of the road is miserable. Despite repeated requests for improvement of the remaining part of the road, it has not yet been completed. Our request to the PWD did not yield any result. We recently met PWD Superintendent Engineer Naba Konwar in this regard and he had provided assurance of completion of the remaining work within weeks,� Bordoloi said, adding, �the residents face more problems at night as there are no street lights in the area.�
However, the PWD claimed that due to COVID-19 restrictions, the work has been delayed.
When contacted, Naba Konwar told this correspondent that it would start the remaining work soon after the availability of ICBP materials. �The work will be completed within a week,� he said.
The improvement work would have been completed much earlier but it became lengthy due to inter-departmental feud.
�During construction of a stormwater drain in the area in the initial period, the underground water supply pipelines laid by JICA were taken out by the contractor. After the local people�s intervention, the pipes were laid again but it took more than eight months. If the local people had not intervened, the PWD contractor would have constructed the road without water pipelines,� alleged another resident Nabruz Islam.
�The residents were happy to see the PWD taking up the improvement work. We urge the PWD to complete the work immediately,� he added.
The residents of the area have also been hit hard since March due to irregular water supply by the Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC), soon after a newly purchased pump of the Satpukhuri water supply treatment plant got damaged.
However, the GMC claimed that they had fixed the pump recently and normal water supply was restored. But in reality, the residents are now receiving water once in three to four days.
