Nilagiri: Nine years have passed since work on a bridge project was started at Ajodhya panchayat, a fringe area under Nilagiri block of Balasore, but it is nowhere near completion. Locals alleged that despite the allocation of funds, the construction work is moving at a snail’s pace for nearly a decade due to the lethargy of the contractor and officials of the rural development department. Thousands of people in the region have been suffering on the communication front owing to the non-completion of the bridge.
Reports said people of Baliapal, Narsinghpur and Tinidesh under Nilagiri block and several bordering villages in Mayurbhanj district have to negotiate through water in order to cross the Sona river on a daily basis. The locals had long been demanding for a bridge across the river.
Taking the demand into account, the state government sanctioned Rs 9 crore for a bridge project under Biju Setu Yojana in 2013. Its construction was started in 2014 with an agreement with the contractor to finish it within three years. Nine years have passed after that, but the bridge is yet to be completed, lamented locals, adding that the contractor had been delaying the work citing various reasons, even though the rural development department has sent several reminders to the former to complete the work. “We always face a lot of difficulties in commuting through the river to reach our farmlands across the river. Sometimes, to bypass the river, we take a detour of 15 kilometre to reach our farmlands,” they pointed out. The bridge can directly provide a communication link to some pockets of Mayurbhanj district.
In the monsoon, the riparian villages fail to venture out as the river remains in spate throughout the season. SDO of the Rural Development division, Iswari Prasad Das did not pick up the phone when contacted. Junior engineer Debabrata Garu attributed the delay of the bridge project to some technical problems. “We hope its work will be completed by next monsoon,” he added