The road condition and overall connectivity in the southern part of Orissa some years back happened to be the worse in the country. But things are changing at a rapid pace and all efforts are being made by to improve the road connectivity in these parts, with works more than 300 crore in this district in major rodas such as SH 4, SH 5 and SH 43. All these projects when completed will surely change the face of the district.
The work on SH 4 is done under the Vijaywada Ranchi corridor project, which also involves the 4 laning of the Rayagada town portion. The four laning part of the VRC project has proved to be the most challenging. the town portion was 3.5 meters laid long back. The problematic part is that most of the other utilities such as PHD water pipe line, electric poles and lines, telephones lines, etc were laid acoordingly and now when the town road portion is widened to four lane, whcih comes to 16 meters, all these utilities have to be realigned. Also there is this issue of cutting and trimming of trees for road widening.
In developmet parlance it is said that there is hardly any work which doesn't require some kind of coordination between different departments and a work like widening of the road requires lot of coordination between different departments for which the role of an authority like the District Magistrate becomes very important. So, Collector & DM, Rayagada along with EE PWD, EE SOUTHCO, EE GED, AE PHD and number of other functionaries reviwed the progress f road works and conducted field visits on VRC project road.
Progress of this portion had been suffering beacuse of slow progress regarding shifting of electrical poles and wires and from PHD side regarding shifting of water pipe lines which after the widening of the road happen to fall right at he middle of the road now.
It was only after the intervention of the district administration, the dispute between the PWD and SOUTHCO regarding shifting of electrical lines was solved and the process of shifting of electrical poles started in mid of this year. However after initial progress, again the work was stopped to be resumed recently.
In case of PHD there was no money to shift the pipe line and with the efforts of the district administration a proposal have been sent to govt for approval which is likely to be done within a short period now.
Today a meeting of all these agencies involved in the road widening and activities related to it, such as PWD, SOUTHCO, PHD, RWSS was called by the Collector Rayagada to sort out the issues. Also the team visited the town portion of the Vijaywada Ranchi corridor and saw on the field the things that are required to be done. Collector Rayagada has instructed for the expeditious completion of the work of pole and pipe line shifting, along with the cutting and trimming of trees. The progress will be monitored on daily basis.
PORTION OF THE KEREDA ROAD ON 12 DECEMBER 2010
The work on Kereda road which is the link to Andhra pradesh had been started and a major portion of it is completed till date. there has been a seas change from the condition that was there a year back ( as can be made out from the picture above) and a now ( pic of the same stretch given below). It is pertinent to mention that the Kereda road is only an MDR ( Major District Road) and not even a state highway. But taking into account its importance from connectivity and economic point of view, the district administration had to intervene and get the work done from PWD. Before the road work the journey of 22 Kms from the Kereda check gate on the Andhra Orissa border to Rayagda town was taking one and a half hour, now the same journey can be completed in less than 30 minutes.
THE PORTION OF KEREDA ROAD AROUND THE SAME STRETCH (OPPOSITE SIDE VIEW) AS THE PIC ABOVE ON 30 SEP 2011
