The Minister of Road Transport & Highways and Shipping, Nitin Gadkari, has called for drastic improvement in the quality of road engineering in the country, aligning them to international standards.

Speaking at the inception day celebrations of National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Ltd (NHIDCL) in New Delhi, Gadkari also cited the high number of road accidents in India and the resultant fatalities.

The minister said that preparation of very high quality of Detailed Project Reports (DPRs) is the very first stage in ensuring road safety. He said that DPRs should incorporate the latest technology, safety features like crash barriers in hilly terrain, intelligent traffic plans and proper signages, rectifying identified black spots. In addition to being perfect from the engineering perspective, the minister called for time-bound DPR with quick and transparent decision-making at every level. He called for an audit of the decision-making process and said unnecessary delays will not be tolerated. 

NHIDCL had organized a conference on ‘Appropriate Technologies for Soil and Slope Stabilisation and Road Construction in High Rainfall areas’ earlier during the day. NHIDCL has been entrusted with the task of building roads in the North Eastern states and hilly parts of the country. These areas have very heavy rainfall. Stabilisation of soil and slopes are a major concern there. The conference provided a platform for technical experts, contractors, government officials, material providers and other stakeholders to come together and discuss the latest, appropriate technology to put into use in road construction. Technical experts Giorgio Giachetti from Italy and Leigh Brown from Australia made presentations on soil and slope stabilisation and roadside safety in hilly terrain infrastructure respectively. 

Referring to the conference and the presentations made by the technical experts Gadkari called upon the corporation to set up a pre-casting unit in the North East so that pre-cast bridges and other structures could be made there. He also said that locally available material should be used in construction work, which would go a long way in lowering costs. In addition, he said that concessionaires must train local youth so that they can get some employment at these road projects.

Anand Kumar, managing director of NHIDCL informed that the organization was handling 133 projects of about 8000 km and costing about Rs 8,000 crore in 14 states. 

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