Bhubaneswar: To augment revenues in view of the worldwide pandemic, the state government is planning to collect toll on major state highways and other roads under the administrative control of the Works department.
The state Works department has asked chief engineer-roads and chief engineer-World Bank projects to identify stretches and roads where toll can be collected.
“I am directed to request you to identify and report the stretches of roads for considering the feasibility towards the award of new toll gates to Odisha Bridge & Construction Corporation Limited (OB&CC) for collection of toll through a regular auction process,” works additional secretary RK Acharya wrote to two chief engineers.
The department has sought a list of feasible roads from the engineers following the proposal of OB&CC Ltd.
The corporation, in its proposal, said, “It is noticed that a number of state highways have improved and been widened to two lanes over last few years under the State Highways Development Plan (SHDP) and have enough potential for toll traffic. Collection of toll on these roads shall generate good revenues for the highway maintenance and shall ease the burden on government funds.”
No doubts that the move will be an additional burden on people, who are already in distress due to pandemic and price hike of fuel & essential commodities. Besides, the toll fee imposed by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) on various NHs is pinching road users.
At this pandemic situation, the revenue collection has drastically fallen in the state. Therefore, with an aim to get additional revenues, the government has taken the move, sources said.
Justifying the proposal, an official of OB&CC said many new roads have been constructed and existing roads strengthened in the meantime. The government has spent approximately `2,000 crore taking loans from World Bank and state plan schemes on road development projects over past four to five years.
“The government has spent such a huge amount of resources in the development of road network in the state and it is utilizing additional resources for maintenance of these roads. Therefore, we have proposed to collect toll on major roads where good traffic is there,” said the official.
The government has given the power to OB&CC Ltd to collect toll at different toll gates in respect of state roads and bridges. At present, the corporation is managing 29 toll gates on the PWD roads/bridges. However, no new tollgate has been added to toll collection since 2015.
The government is able to collect about `23 to 25 crore every year from 29 toll gates. If the number of roads is maximized for toll collection, the revenue figure will touch Rs 100 crore, the sources added.
Biswa Bhusan Mohapatra, OP