Service road not built; underpass construction going slow; people suffering in traffic jams on national highway

THRISSUR: The unsolved traffic jams at Muringoor and Chirangara on the Ernakulam-Thrissur National Highway are a testament to the serious negligence of the contracting company and the National Highway Authority. The service road should have been repaired before the construction of the closed National Highway, which is crossed by lakhs of people every day. The people and their representatives pointed this out from the beginning, but the contracting company and the National Highway Authority did not listen.

Heavy rains caused huge potholes and collapsed service roads. With this, vehicles have been getting stuck for hours day and night on the Edappally-Mannuthi section of National Highway 544 for three months. The sick, the elderly and children were stranded in the middle of the road.

District Collector Arjun Pandian, who visited the site, had suggested that the parallel roads should be made passable. The National Highways Authority Project Director assured that a solution would be found within a week, but that too was empty talk.

Total negligence

Underpass construction is underway in Amballur, Perambra, Muringoor and Chirangara. With the onset of the rainy season, construction was at a standstill in many places. Despite the intervention of the High Court and the Supreme Court, the service road could not be constructed permanently. The incharges were not ready to lay tar, blaming the rain, even after days of rain.

Many reasons

1. Weak and narrow service road
2. Service road full of potholes even before the underpass work started
3. Mud from the construction work flowed onto the service road during the rain
4. Wheels of trailers and other vehicles got stuck in the mud
5. Quarry waste, soil and stones were scattered on the road, forming a mud puddle