Chittoor district to top the nation in laying Cement Concrete roads

Tirupati: Chittoor district has been marching ahead to reach another milestone of completing 1,000-km Cement Concrete (CC) roads with an aim of developing the remote areas.

Linking Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) to the works, a target of 1,069-km was fixed for laying CC roads during 2018-19 out of which 857 km was completed till now. 

But District Collector PS Pradyumna has directed the officials to complete the target by January 2019 itself and nowhere in the country CC road works were taken up on such a large scale. These works have helped many colonies in the remote villages to get proper transport facilities.

Several panchayats were having all CC roads now and reached saturation level. A target of 250 km CC roads in SC colonies and 61 km in ST colonies was fixed. 

The 81 per cent of the CC road works were completed and the remaining 19 per cent is completed then the district will become the first one in the country to have completed 1,000 km CC roads in a year and the Collector wishes to mark the occasion by unveiling a plaque. 

The ultimate goal was to provide CC roads to all the villages in the district by 2020 for which the Panchayat Raj department has been working hard by taking up the works extensively along with the construction of Velugu Bhavans, Angagnwadi centres and laying of BT road works.

An engineer in the Panchayat Raj department who preferred to be anonymous revealed that Rs 300 crore was the estimated cost of 1,069-km CC road works. 

Already, Rs 150 crore were paid to the concerned and the remaining bills will be cleared very soon. Apart from the convergence of NREGS, funds from other sources like 14th Finance Commission, MPLADS, Zilla Parishad were used to complete the works. In the last four years about 3000 km CC road works have been completed in the district. 

The targets for every year have been increased since 2014-15. For instance, in one village at Satyavedu mandal had only 120 metres of CC roads which now has 1056 metres. The works have been distributed to all mandals throughout the district wherever the need felt. 

Narayanavanam mandal needs another 6.7 km CC roads to get saturation stage. With the remote villages also getting CC roads and Anganwadi buildings the standard of living of the villagers has improved. Several villages were now getting good transport facilities. 

Speaking to The Hans India, an official has said that it was not an easy thing to lay 1,000 km CC roads in a year and certainly a great achievement which was possible with the motivation and all-round support of the District Collector.