Kasauli link road yet to be concretised, villagers suffer
More than four years after the work to construct the Sanawar-Shiller-Pathia-Mandodhar road began, the link road is yet to be concreted.
A sum of Rs 3.52 crore was incurred on laying this road which measures 3.5 km. It was funded by National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD). While a walking path already existed, the road was barely widened with a few shoddy culverts having been laid. The villagers were awaiting the concretisation of the road as it had been reduced to a dusty path which erodes every monsoon, adding to the woes of the residents of Shiller and Pathia villages.
Former Kasauli MLA Dr Rajiv Saizal had laid its foundation stone in October 2020.
“Schoolchildren face the maximum hardships while using the road as they have to trudge on the rough path to reach their school in Sanawar after negotiating a stretch of nearly 3.5 km. The uneven road surface has made driving vehicles a tough proposition as these tend to slip on the rough surface,” said Ajay, a resident of Shiller village.
Without carrying out the concretisation of the carved-out roads, the Public Works Department (PWD) was merely excavating the hills to lay kutcha roads in the Kasauli division. The roads’’ plight worsens when heavy vehicles ply over these, even though these have not been passed for heavy load. Due to the paucity of funds, it takes decades to lay a concrete bituminous layer over the roads. Several such roads have been laid in the past about two years and these were awaiting funds for being concretised.
With the PWD having a few funds to concretise the newly carvedout roads,the villagers suffer each time it rains as the excavated hills erode and the boulders protrude out of the rough surface of the road.
An illustration of this fact is the case of the Kimmughat-Chakki Mor road. Nearly a decade and a half after this 16.38-km road was laid, it will be finally concretised with NABARD assistance of Rs 1.62 crore received recently. The stretch is among 35 roads approved for NABARD funding in the state.
The fund-starved state government has a liability of Rs 150 crore towards the contractors who had executed various road works in the south zone, comprising Solan, Sirmaur, Shimla, Kinnaur and parts of Lahaul Spiti district, said an official. A sum of barely Rs 1 crore was available to pay to the contractors. This has made it difficult to execute works like concretising the laid kutcha roads.
