M’laya seeks addl fund for road project

New Delhi: The Centre may step in to help Meghalaya for completing the World Bank-aided Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana Rural Roads Project (Phase II).
The project, which is supposed to be completed within this financial year, has not made desired progress due to lack of fund besides other reasons.
The Hill State, which is facing an uphill task in completing the vial project, has demanded Rs 250 core instead of a meager Rs 92 crore, which was granted earlier, to complete the project, Meghalaya PWD Minister S Dhar told The Shillong Times here on Saturday.
He had a meeting with the Union Minister for Rural Development Chaudhary Birendra Singh who assured him to look into the matter favourably.
“I have sought the Union Minister’s intervention,” Dhar said.
Meghalaya is faced with the daunting task of constructing 1625 kilometers of rural roads under the PMGSY Rural Roads Project (Phase II) mostly due to lack of fund.
Dhar said that the outlay of the project for the entire state has been fixed at 100 million dollars for 290 roads and 36 bridges with a total length of 1112.83 kms. “Work has been going on since 2012,” he said.
“The outlay for Meghalaya as earmarked by the Ministry during 2015-16 is only Rs 92 crore  of which Rs 40 crore has been released,” Dhar said adding that the balance amount of Rs 52 crore is grossly inadequate.
Main reason for delay in completion of such projects s due to the difficult terrain,  cost  escalation.  World Bank has funded Rs 1070 crore over a period of five years  to construct rural roads under PMGSY.
World Bank support for PMGSY began in 2004 with a $400 million Rural Roads Project (2004 -2012). Under the project more than 9,900km of rural roads have been constructed in selected districts of Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh.