With the passage of time, wear and tear coupled with most probably material used of not set parameters and dimensions, most of the bridges in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir are prone or susceptible to safety hazards. The thumb rule should have been, and as a matter of precedent and practice too, to subject each and every bridge to mandatory periodic safety audit by expert team to find out which remedial action was necessary to be taken to attend to shortcomings, if found any. Since most probably such mandatory periodic inspections and audits have so far never travelled beyond rule book or files, if the practice has started now, it should be maintained and never made exceptional. While the fact of the matter is that regular safety audits and inspections provide opportunity to undertaking repairs and other required works on such bridges to ensure their longevity, their number in the entire UT is not scant by any standards which doubly calls for employing high category safety audits regularly.
In this connection, we welcome the decision of Lieutenant Governor Girish Chandra Murmu for having directed for immediate safety audit and full checking of all those bridges constructed twenty years back. Though such a decision even if taken belatedly, must become an integral part of post constructions of all the bridges and otherwise also such a provision does exist in the Prime Minister Gramin Sadak Yojna ( PMGSY) . It is not any overstating of the fact that under the said scheme, the results on the ground havenot been up to the mark simply because logistic support from the erstwhile state administrative departments to the projects undertaken under the scheme were, generally, not up to the desired levels resulting in many of them not getting completed within stipulated timelines.
That a thorough assessment of physical and financial progress of various projects under the PMGSY across Jammu and Kashmir was accessed by the Lt. Governor in a meeting recently, it is noteworthy that it has been decided about and thrust being laid on maintenance and upkeep of the assets created and to devise an appropriate policy in that regard. It would be wise enough to plan repairs and maintenance side by side for which a proper provision for maintenance budget should be evolved. Various directives like creating earth quake resistant infrastructure and proper inspection of steel and iron bridges with stress on the type of specific pipes used for draining out accumulated water, are elementary requirements going a long way in ensuring long term safety norms. What is neededmost is using standard material and no compromise on the basic parameters of construction standards.
Languishing projects, on the other hand, was another major problem, because of host of reasons chiefly financial, needing attention and monitoring although slew of such projects have been taken up for kick-starting work on them and it was declared that all such languishing projects would be completed by the end of this year. That they may not miss this deadline too must be ensured and verily, therefore, Lt. Governor has called for a district wise report on achievements which could give a sense of whether they would all be fully completed by ending December 2019. Stress must be laid not only on the quality of work on the bridges and constructions of roads but the speed of work too should be toned up. Usually we find roads constructed not surviving even oneheavy rainfall and ditches and trenches like gaps are created resulting in inconvenience to the normal traffic which therefore demands quality tests.
We also find that the targets in constructing lengths of roads are not achieved. Out of nearly a length of 20000 kms, only 11000 kms length of roads under the scheme are constructed although there was no problem of funds support. In the same way, out of 64 bridges set to be constructed during 2019-20, only 56 are reported to be completed. Regular review of works performance and monitoring are the required measures to be adopted in constructions of roads and bridges in Jammu and Kashmir.
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