Road works in Naxal-hit areas be taken up by BRO:Harichandan

Bhubaneswar, Oct 16 (UNI) The Orissa government has urged the Centre to entrust the construction of roads under the PMGSY scheme to the Border Road Organisation in the naxal-affected areas.

Rural Development Minister Biswa Bhushan Harichandan told newspersons here that the construction of roads under the PMGSY scheme suffered in naxal-affected districts of Malkangiri, Keonjhar, Sambalpur, Gajapati, Rayagada, Deogarh and Sundergarh as no contractor was willing to take up the work.

He urged the Centre to provide adequate security to the contractors and workers.

A similar request by the state government was earlier turned down by the Centre.

The minister also requested the Central government to extend the time limit of completing work from 11 months to 18 months as no work could be undertaken in the state due to heavy rains and flood.

Mr Harichandan asked the Union government to reimburse the cost of net project value in case of a forest land and pay the revised cost of the works which could not be awarded due to higher tender rates or non response ever after inviting tender thrice.

The minister said the state government had increased the number of Rural Works division from 30 to 50 and higher value packages had been split into small packages to attract more number of contractors for achieving more progress.

He said the Union government had sanctioned 5412 project proposals of roads measuring 19,162 km at a cost of Rs 6010.97 crore under PMGSY from 2000 to 2008 to provide connectivity to 7592 unconnected habitations.

The Union government, he said, had released Rs 3083.11 crore, including Rs 731.63 crore, during the current year for the construction of PMGSY Roads.

The state government, the minster said, had utilised Rs 2741.06 crore including Rs 427.34 crore till September 2008 by completing 2657 number of roads covering a length of 9212 km.

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