The road to the Jharsuguda District Headquarters Hospital is in a terrible shape. If large potholes are not enough due to rains, they are now filled with water causing cracks on the road.
Not only has this hampered ambulance and patient's traffic movement but has also caused many fatal accidents in the recent past.
The road happens to be the prime route for IOCL Terminal, Black Diamond College of Engineering, Ultratech Cement factory, Vedanta, and Jharsuguda's New District Headquarters
Hospital.
The residents have made repeated complaints to different wings of the administration but no concrete steps have been taken to fix the situation.
Local social activist Satyanarayan Rao said that despite the pathetic state of the road, 16- wheel trolleys that carry about 25 tonne
of ultra-tech cement ply on the road regularly and sometimes even 24- wheel heavy duty trailers carrying 34 tonnes of heavy machinery headed to Vedanta's plant also ply on the road. No wonder, the road is mot regularly maintained and is going from bad to worse.
The overloaded trucks have been a major source of damage to the road structure.
When Jharsuguda PWD Executive Engineer Ashish Nath was asked about the problem, he said that the department has repaired the road thrice but due to heavy vehicle movement (about 1,500 vehicles every day) in the
double- lane road, the road repeatedly gets damaged
and revealed that the PWD is planning to broaden the road to four- lane for which
the tender process has already begun.
He added that 70 per cent of the private land required to complete the broadening of the road has already been acquired and the remaining 30 per cent would be acquired soon.
He also informed that one more bypass road is being planned to decongest the traffic on the road which would provide a big respite to every commuters and patients.