Punjab Public Works Minister Harbhajan Singh ETO on Wednesday said the devastating floods have caused extensive damage to 4,658 km of roads and 68 bridges in the state.
Presiding over the review meeting regarding the assessment of losses, he said under Plan Roads, 19 bridges and 1,592.76 km roads have been damaged along with R-walls and B-walls measuring 4,014.11 metres and 92 culverts.
Similarly, under the National Highways, four bridges and 49.69 km of roads have been damaged, in addition to 2,559.5 metres of R-walls and B-walls and 14 culverts.
Under Link Roads, 45 bridges and 2,357.84 km of roads have suffered damage, along with 3,282 metres of R-walls and B-walls and 376 culverts.
Also, 657.54 km of roads built under Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana have also been impacted.
He said that an estimated expenditure of Rs 1,969.50 crore will be required for the repair and restoration of damaged bridges, roads, R-walls, B-walls and culverts.
During the meeting, Harbhajan Singh directed officials of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) to immediately improve the condition of different roads. He also instructed them to expedite projects that have not yet taken off.
The Cabinet Minister expressed concern over recurring accidents caused by delays in repairing service roads alongside the under-construction flyovers at Mallian, Tangra and Daburji on the Amritsar-Jandiala section. He directed officials to complete this work without any further delay.
He also directed the NHAI officers to address the traffic congestion persisting under the Kharar flyover.
He said that during the meeting, discussions were also held on the app-based survey being conducted by the Punjab government to assess flood-related damages in nearly 2,800 villages. Prominent amongst others who were present at the meeting included Special Secretary PWD Hargun Jeet Kaur, Chief Engineers Gagandeep Singh, Vijay Kumar Chopra, Ramtesh Bains, and Anil Gupta, NHAI Regional Officer Rakesh Kumar and Project Director Aseem Bansal.