Surat to get polymeric cement concrete roads soon

The Surat Municipal Corporation is looking to convert all roads in the city into polymeric cement concrete ones.

The municipal corporation's standing committee on Thursday approved conversion of four more major roads of the city into polymeric ones at an estimated expenditure of Rs 60 crore.

On an experimental basis, the project had been implemented on the road from Athwa Gate to Udhna Darwaja and then from Parle Point to Athwa Gate.

With the project turning out to be successful, the standing committee gave the go-ahead for conversion of four more roads into polymeric roads. These four roads are extremely important as they connect the city with the national highways.

The four roads are Surat-Bardoli Road, Surat-Navsari Road, Surat-Dumas Road and Rander-Hazira Road. The decision to convert the first two roads into polymeric roads had been taken quite some time back, but its implementation had to be postponed on account of the Lok Sabha elections.

The standing committee chairman Shankar Chevli said, "An estimated Rs 13.38 crore will be spent for conversion of Surat-Dumas Road into polymeric road. Conversion of Rander-Hazira Road, Surat-Bardoli Road and Surat-Navsari Road will cost Rs 10.72 crore, Rs 7.42 crore and Rs 26.07 crore, respectively."

"The contractors for conversion of Surat-Navsari Road and Surat-Bardoli Road into polymeric roads had already been pre-qualified, but work on the project could not start as the Code of Conduct was in force in view of the Lok Sabha elections," said Chevli.

"We have pre-qualified four more contractors for the project. The four firms are Mumbai-based Walecha Engineering Company, Unity Infra Project Ltd of Mumbai, Samidutt Builders Pvt Ltd of Delhi and Ashoka Buildcon Ltd of Nasik," Chevli said.

"We will invite bids from these contractors for the two additional projects shortly and accordingly, work will be distributed among them. The work on widening these four roads as well as the work on shifting of service lines will be undertaken in the coming days. The decision regarding conversion of other roads of the city into polymeric roads will also be taken subsequently," said Chevli.