Kolkata: With the Oct 10 deadline for road repairs expiring, patchwork has been completed on most of Kolkata’s roads that were in urgent need of repairs. However, the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation (BMC) is yet to fix several major roads, prompting its teams to rush to repair multiple stretches across Salt Lake.According to sources in KMC and BMC roads departments, while the civic bodies were waiting for the rain to stop to take up the repair work, KMC could rope in borough-wise road repair teams to wrap up the work but BMC lacked such infrastructure and hence the repair work could not gain much pace. “We had kept multiple teams in the boroughs ready and had been waiting for the rain to stop. As we got relatively dry spells, we could start the work on a war footing and hurriedly wrapped up the work. We have covered all major thoroughfares,” said a KMC roads department official.According to the official, the KMC roads department has kept multiple mobile road repair vans ready across 16 boroughs, which will now be pressed into service to repair potholes. “We have asked our borough-wise road department officials to spot such potholes and take immediate action. We also invite the citizens to locate potholes and let us know the location,” said a KMC roads department official.In Salt Lake, as the repair work was hampered due to frequent spells, the authorities will continue work for the next few days to complete the drive ahead of the puja.Residents, however, expressed relief that repair work was finally taken up. “The authorities have finally started repairing the damaged stretches inside the blocks. The condition of roads would not have turned into such a sorry state had the civic authorities regularly maintained them every year,” said a resident of AE Block. KMDA is assisting the civic authorities in repairing some stretches as per directives of the urban development & municipal affairs department.The authorities are installing concrete paver blocks on the stretches that were getting repeatedly damaged for ensuring higher durability, while for the inner lanes, the existing surface is being peeled off and the stretch is being relaid with fresh bitumen mastic asphalt.
