NHAI gears up to ensure national highways are in good condition during monsoon

The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) has directed its Regional Officers (ROs) and Project Directors (PDs) to undertake the maintenance of national highways on top priority-basis considering the ensuing monsoon season.

The move has been taken to ensure patchless and traffic worthy condition of roads during the monsoon. "The aim is to facilitate timely action and keep the highway stretches traffic-worthy ahead of the monsoon season, i.e., latest by June 30, 2020," said an official of NHAI.

"The NHAI has issued new policy guidelines to help its ROs/PDs plan and prioritise better, and then expedite the process of highway maintenance in the desired manner. The target is to ensure thorough planning of the requisite activities and the implementation of the same in a time-bound manner," added the official.

Project Directors have been advised to make an assessment of the condition of highways supported by technology-driven tools such as car-mounted camera, drone, network survey vehicle (NSV), etc., for the identification of various highway distress like depression, rutting, cracking, etc., and plan rectification measures.

Regional Officers of NHAI have been delegated sufficient financial powers to make quick decisions regarding maintenance activities. It has been directed to the field officers to adhere to the timeline while regularly monitoring the progress of maintenance work. Reporting to the NHAI at regular intervals has also been included in the guidelines.

The NHAI headquarters will be monitoring the progress closely through its Project Management Software -- Data Lake where pictures of before and after repair works would be uploaded, apart from other repair-related information.

In the wake of COVID 19 pandemic, the NHAI has also catered to 10,017 migrants in total across India till April 17 with food, water, and aid as per the latest data made available by the NHAI.

( With inputs from ANI )