It’s yet another case of hand wringing and money wrangling between two ‘thrifty’ government departments that has cast uncertainty over a significant project.
The renovation works on the century-old Kacherithazham bridge in Muvattupuzha town, regarded as the oldest concrete bridge in the country, has been bogged down by consistent delays.
Officials attribute the delay to the uncertainty over shifting the two pipe lines of the Kerala Water Authority passing through the bridge. The cost of removing the pipelines is estimated at around Rs 33 lakh.
“The dispute is over who will meet this cost, the custodian of the pipeline or the PWD, which implements the project’’, officials said.
The project, which envisages strengthening the structure while preserving its archaeological features, began about six months ago. It, however, has never achieved the desired pace owing to one reason or the other.
The Rs 1.65-crore project renewal proposal was mooted by the Archaeology Department and is executed by the Public Works Department.
On the completion of works, a concise history of the bridge, built in 1914 by British engineer W H Emarald during the regime of Maharaja Sreemoolam Thirunal, will be put up on the structure.
Scrappy bus crew
The next time you travel by a city bus, make sure that you avoid a run-in with the crew.
The recent incident in which the employees of two private buses in Kochi clashed on a busy city road has once again brought to light the rude behaviour of bus crew towards passengers.
The rude behaviour is a reflection of bus owners’ attitude towards passengers, claims Dejo Kappan, managing trustee of the Centre for Consumer Education and a transportation expert. “The owners compel the crew to increase the collection and give them a free-reign’’, he said.
While the authorities seek to deny any link between rash driving and collection batta, they are at a loss to explain as to why the crew drive recklessly through busy roads if they are not paid batta in proportion to the daily collection.
While the police deny that that some buses are owned by ‘benamis’ like influential people and police officials - which might have been the case in the past , sources claim that the practice still prevails.
According to them, some corrupt officials are using the transport sector as an avenue to invest ill-gotten money. “Their roles come to the fore when these vehicles are caught for rule violations. They immediately intervene and request for an exemption for this ‘one’ time’’, they said.
But the police cite statistics and claim that they are doing whatever is possible to book rule violators.
Hiran Unnikrishnan
