MCC monthly meeting – opposition protests against poor interior roads

MCC monthly meeting – opposition protests against poor interior roads

Mangalore Today News Network

Mangalore, Dec 24, 2011: The opposition party members of the Mangalore City Corporation (MCC) council have urged the mayor to take immediate steps to asphalt the city’s interior roads, which are in an unusable condition. They were dressed in black as a mark of protest against the civic body’s failure to properly maintain interior roads.

Speaking at the monthly meeting of the MCC held yesterday, MCC opposition leader Lancelot Pinto said that the authorities concerned must take immediate steps to asphalt the city’s interior roads because even pedestrians find it difficult to walk on them. Stating that general funds and SFC grants have been used to concretize the city’s main roads while the interior roads remain neglected, he said that the SFC grants and the 12th Finance Commission grants should be equally distributed among all the 60 wards of the civic body.

Corporator Shashidhar Hegde said that the focus should be on overall development of the city. Stating that development does not mean concretization of roads alone, he said that repairing interior roads should be prioritized because there are just a few months left for the monsoon.

When D. K. Ashok wanted to know if the Kadri Temple Road will be asphalted before Jan 14, Deepak Poojary urged the concerned authorities to blacklist all contractors who fail to keep their deadlines. When Sudheer Shetty stated that the funds have already been released for road development, the opposition members wanted to see a list of approved projects.

Voicing his opinions on the road issue, Premanand Shetty said that repair of interior work should be prioritized, owing to which some civil work should be dropped so that the focus can placed on interior road development.

James D’Souza informed the meeting that contractors are unwilling to take up road work because the schedule of rates (SR) for roads is very low compared to raw material rates.

Other Issues

The issues of maintaining streetlights within the city and solid waste management were also discussed at the meeting. Voicing his opinion regarding the single package maintenance system, Shanker Bhat said that the single package system leads to monopoly and suggested the four package system or the six package system.

When the discussion turned to the topic of solid waste management, the opposition leaders wanted to know about the Indian Audit and Account Department’s report regarding misappropriation of funds in the civic body.

Dr. Harish Kumar, the commissioner of the MCC, and Geetha Nayak, the deputy mayor, were also present.