Posted on August 31, 2022
The chairman of Kolkata Port Trust (KoPT) has ordered all 33 of the port’s maintained roads in the KidderporeGarden Reach belt to be fixed by Friday, and he has taken punitive action against two engineers for the poor condition of the roads that caused a councillor’s son to pass away on Saturday night.
Following the conclusions of an investigation report by a team of Port officials, a junior engineer was suspended and another senior executive engineer was given show cause. “The chairman has asked all engineers to be on the road for the next 10 days and ensure that all potholes are repaired within three-four days. An extensive repair with paver blocks will follow the patchwork in the next 15 days,” Port spokesperson Sanjoy Mukherjee said to TOI.
The Port officials have received assistance from KMC in locating the worst sections of the roadways and providing labour and supplies to fix them. This is a change from the disputes between the port and the local government around the upkeep of the roadways.
At Dock East Boundary Road in Kidderpore, where TMC councillor Ram Pyare Ram’s son Ramkinkar died when a truck hit a huge crater and fell on his car, KMC workers were discovered working in coordination with KoPT. The mayor, Firhad Hakim, had expressed concern over the slow pace of work on the part of KoPT to repair damaged stretches.
Hakim refuted claims that the major highway had been dug up and asserted that KMC had dug up a side of the road in order to install a 6-inch pipeline, which could not have been left in the condition it was in at the time of the accident.
