In a bid to provide quality of life to the people, the State Government is giving a thrust to road infrastructure projects and spending crores of rupees for improving road conditions in the State.
This includes money provided by the World Bank under different schemes, State Highway Development funds, State Plan and Non-Plan and funds for upgradation of tourism infrastructure.
The huge investments are meant for the benefit of the public. But unfortunately the results are not encouraging.
The Odisha Works Department (OWD) is parroting the implementation of the 5T initiatives and MO Sarkar principles in the department’s functioning. For this it has put up signages with the pictures of the Chief Minister with various slogans.
But as it has not put the preaching into practice, the people are making fun of these slogans.
A glaring example is, in the last few years, the department has spent crores of rupees to improve drainage facilities to prevent water-logging in Behera Sahi, Jagamara, Power Houser Square, Jaydev Vihar, Kesura- Jharpada and many other places in the State capital Bhubaneswar.
But knowledgeable sources said that all these major drainage projects have failed and all the funds have gone down the drain.
The result is all the roads in these areas have been badly damaged due to pools of water accumulating on them.
In the last financial year, if the road conditions are analysed, it is back to square one. Neither the longevity of the roads increased, nor the sliding of two wheelers on the patches put up to cover the potholes have decreased. Instead the potholes have grown in size, creating an illusion of paddy fields.
From these, the engineers’ skills and technical acumen,who are in-charge of the supervision in the divisions, can be well imagined though crores of rupees were spent for constructing good roads,
The intelligentsia alleged that a huge chunk of the allocations are being siphoned off a nexus of some dishonest officials and select contractors.
A few roads around State Secretariat, Assembly, Naveen Niwas which are in good condition due to VIP movement, do not portray the real picture of the State.
The monsoon and the subsequent waterlogging have proved a boon for some division engineers who have pulled up their socks to embezzle the allocations made to repair the damaged roads.
A few agencies like Span Infra and some other contractors are bagging using their licence to bag contracts but are later subletting or splitting them.
The concerned agency carried out the construction of the Kharvel Bhawan, Lok Seva convention hall and backside parking lot of the State Secretariat, but the work was split up. The modernisation work of Capital Hospital OT was done by it through subletting. It is alleged that huge tax evasion was done, which can be revealed by a probe by a Central agency, said the intelligentsia.