National Highways Facing Lack Of Funds For Maintenance, Says Parliamentary Panel

A parliamentary standing committee has flagged the lack of lighting on the National Highway (NH) networks and stray animals causing road accidents.

Observing that maintenance and repair (M&R) of highways should get “higher priority than construction” of new NHs, the parliamentary panel in its latest report has said lack of maintenance would result in "national wastage" of the huge budget spent in building highways.

In its report “Issues Relating to Road Sector” tabled in both houses of Parliament, the committee said it was “deeply concerned” to note that the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) and Highways Ministry were managing the M&R of NHs across with an allocation of just about 40 per cent of the actual requirements estimated by the ministry.

"Maintenance and repair of the existing NHs is of utmost importance in order to keep them in a safe, pliable condition and to permit good average traffic speeds. This should be given higher priority than construction of new NHs...The committee recommends that 100 per cent requirement for M&R projected by the ministry should be allocated in the budget. Any reduction in the budget for M&R may result in deterioration of the roads constructed with hundreds of crores of national budget which will be national wastage,” the committee said in its report.

The ministry had informed the committee that less allocation of funds leads to spreading thin available resources for repair and maintenance of NHs.

The committee has also recommended that the service roads should be built along the NHs and these should be at par with the main highways.

It has asked the ministry to undertake a thorough review of the existing monitoring mechanism for road construction quality and come up with ways to plug the gaps so as to ensure higher quality NHs.

The panel has urged the ministry to impose severe financial penalties on the personnel appointed as authority engineer or supervision consultants in cases where gross negligence of the prescribed specifications and standards is observed in roads approved by them.

The parliamentary panel has also urged the government to come out with guidelines to limit the number of hours commercial drivers can drive in a day so that they get enough rest, which will also contribute to making roads safer.

The committee has suggested that the government could fix 10 hours.

Taking note of how poor or lack of lighting can be a factor in severe road accidents, the committee has recommended the ministry to come up with provisions to make it mandatory to install street lights on the entire NH network.

In the report, the panel has also asked the ministry to come up with some mechanism to monitor the frequency of incidents of wildlife and cattle straying on roads causing accidents.

“Necessary action may be taken to coordinate with local law enforcement or concerned agencies to impose a penalty on cattle, animal-rearers for letting out their animals on NHs,” it has recommended.