Speed Post News Network
New Delhi: Union minister for Road Transport, Highways and Shipping Nitin Gadkari has said that the quality of road engineering in the country needs to improve drastically and should match international standards. He was speaking at the Inception Day celebrations of National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Ltd (NHIDCL) in New Delhi on July 26 evening.
Referring to the high number of road accidents in India and the resultant fatalities, Gadkari said that preparation of very high quality of Detailed Project Reports (DPRs) is the very first stage in ensuring road safety. He said that DPRs should incorporate the latest technology, safety features like crash barriers in hilly terrain, intelligent traffic plans, proper signages etc, and should also rectify identified black spots. In addition to being perfect from the engineering perspective, the Minister said that DPR making should be time bound. Decision making at every level should be quick and transparent. He called for audit of decision making process and said unnecessary delays will not be tolerated.
Gadkari said that he was very happy that a major concern like soil and slope stabilization has been discussed and was hopeful that NHIDCL would soon be able to use the latest and most appropriate technologies for building safer roads in the North East and hilly areas of the country. He also called upon the corporation to set up a pre-casting unit in the North East so that pre – cast bridges and other structures could be made here. All this, he said, would go a long way in lowering costs. Minister of State for Road Transport, Highways, Shipping and Chemical and Fertilizer Mansukh Lal Mandaviya expressed satisfaction that so many stakeholders of the road sector were working in close cooperation to make Indian roads safer and of high quality. Anand Kumar, Managing Director, NHIDCL, informed that NHIDCL was handling 133 projects of about 8,000 km.