 "Quality of rural roads should be equal to national highways: Giriraj Singh")
Quality of rural roads should be at par with that of national highways, Union Rural Development Minister Giriraj Singh said on Tuesday while asserting that roads constructed under the PMGSY are lifeline of villages.
Addressing the International Conference - 'New Technologies and Innovations in Rural Roads', Singh advocated for the use of green technologies especially using waste as it makes the road construction more environment friendly.
New technologies like full depth reclamation, cement treated sub base, nano technologies and others are being used in construction of rural roads, these technologies help in reduction of cost by 10 to 15 per cent per km.
"At the same time we also should ensure that quality of rural roads is at par with that of national highways. These roads are lifeline of our villages," Singh, also the Union Panchayati Raj Minister, said.
Echoing similar sentiments Union Minister of state for Panchayati Raj, Kapil Moreshwar Patil, said travelling on rural roads should be as comfortable as it is on national highways so that when travellers move out of the highways towards the rural roads, they should not feel any difference.
Underlining that rural roads have been a "cost-effective" strategy for improving the lives of people in villages, Secretary Department of Rural Development Nagender Nath Sinha said, many studies which prove that rural roads is very cost effective component for development of rural areas and it also results in employment generation.
Sinha said more than 7 lakh km of rural roads have been constructed under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), which helped in lifting the social economic condition of rural masses.
PMGSY was launched in December, 2000, with an objective to provide single all-weather road connectivity to eligible unconnected habitation of designated population size of more than 500 in plain areas, and 250 in northeast, hill, tribal and desert areas.