Potholed, trenched roads play spoilsport in Kochi

The inordinate delay by Kochi Corporation in repairing roads, including arterial and side roads that had been extensively trenched during the past few months by the Kerala Water Authority to lay pipelines under the AMRUT project, has invited widespread flak from the Ernakulam District Residents Associations’ Apex Council and others. In this situation, EDRAAC also strongly condemns the ‘ineptitude’ of the District Administration in ensuring inter-departmental cooperation and timely repair of damaged and trenched roads, he said. Stating that stakeholders, including a section of engineers, were not taking steps to carry out preventive maintenance of roads, S. Gopakumar, president of Better Kochi Response Group - an NGO, said that there was even now reluctance to repair potholes using cold mix bitumen, that is available in sacks and does not need curing time. As an NGO, we had done multiple demos of the cold mix bitumen resurfacing before Mayors and even a PWD Secretary, in Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram, but to no avail.” Steps must also be taken to lay geo-textiles atop roads before resurfacing them, to increase their load-bearing capacity and to uniformly distribute the load from tyres.