AGARTALA, July 24 (TIWN): The state is currently going through crisis of bitumen which adversely affected road construction works in the past few months, Engineer-in-Chief Sunil Bhowmik said here today. Interacting with the media at his office in the civil secretariat here this morning, the official said that the Department of Public Works (PWD) is currently facing crises in maintaining pace with the pending load of road construction works due to shortage of bitumen.

He said that with the six month mega block of the Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) drawing nearer, the authorities are now laying highest stress on procuring foodgrains to ensure the required foodgrain stocks to last the maximum possible period during the mega block. All other transshipments were affected since foodgrains are now given top priority, Bhowmik said.

The NFR mega block is slated to commence from October this year. Speaking about stopgap arrangements, Engineer-in-Chief Sunil Bhowmik said that the PWD authorities recently wrote to the Chairman of the Centeal Railway Board seeking his intervention into the issue. The crisis was more aggravated due to the fact the necessary meter gauge rail wagons to carry the bitumen are not commonplace these days anymore.

“We need around 2,000 MT of bitumen for the amount of work that we have now in hand. We have request the railway board authorities for at least one rack of bitumen to which they agreed. They said the consignment would be reaching us soon provided that NFR authorities didn’t interfere with their priority issues on foodgrain”, the PWD Engineer-in-Chief said.

He added that minor maintenance and repair works allowed to be done in the monsoon are being currently done. Major works would start from September and would continue till March, 2015. “We are expecting an average requirement of around 5,000 MT bitumen in this timeframe. With the mega block in progress, I don’t see how we are going to procure all this bitumen unless we procured some well in advance”, the official said.

He further said that the Department is currently working out secondary action plans with truckers deployed to procure bitumen with nearly double the carriage cost. “We have procured nearly 1,000 MT bitumen through trucks. We are expecting 500 MT more soon”, said Bhowmik.

A source in the Department of Public Works said later today that the authorities are exercising check and control over release of bitumen  to contractor and agencies operating inside the state.