CITING COMPLAINTS from transporters about poor condition of highways and threatening to stop paying toll tax, Rajkot District collector Arun Mahesh Babu on Thursday issued a notice to the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) asking why penal action shouldn’t be proposed.
An official release said that the district collector held a meeting with officers of NHAI, roads and buildings department as well as the Regional Transport Office (RTO) and representatives of transport Association before issuing the notice.
“The collector has today issued a notice to NHAI asking why a proposal should not be sent to the government for initiating penal action against it for laxity in work,” the release stated.
The meeting and show-cause notice comes after a meeting he chaired on August 23 to review progress of roads and highways. At that meeting, it was remarked that work was progressing at slow pace and the collector had ordered prompt action for repairing roads and highways damaged by heavy rain.
However, satisfactory work was not done after the directives, the release suggested. However, lots of representations were received from people, complaining the work of repairing Rajkot-Ahmedabad highway and Rajkot-Jetpur highway was being done very slowly,” the release said.
The release also said that transport association had threatened to stop paying toll tax if roads were not repaired soon. “The transport association had made representations to the collector about difficulties they face while driving due to bad highways. The association had requested the collector to bring this to the notice of toll plaza operators and have the roads repaired at the earliest… else, they had warned, they will not pay toll tax,” said the release.
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The release said that as appropriate action was not taken, the district collector convened the meeting on Thursday.
The release added that officers of NHAI who were present at Thursday’s meeting “assured to complete the work of repairing roads in a speedier manner and to speed up (construction) of national highways”.