Team Herald
PERNEM: A portion of the newly concretised four-lane highway and retaining wall near railway bridge at Sadibag Porsakade collapsed, on Sunday.
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The 6.5-metre wall collapsed along with a portion of the concretised road.
Sources informed that incident occurred around 3 am and the police were informed immediately about the incident. A tariff cop was deployed at the site to divert the late night traffic. The road was recently opened for the traffic.
The locals informed that the concretised road had developed crack last month. The road and the retaining wall posed danger due to washing off the mud during monsoon. Fortunately, no casualties were reported.
Eyebrows have been raised over the quality of the work carried out by the highway contractor.
It may be recalled that in July 2019, a similar incident had occurred here wherein 25-metre retaining wall and road had collapsed.
Jitendra Gaonkar, a local said, “This is scam of the government where in low quality recycled material is used to construct the road. The retaining wall does not have a strong base due to which the mud got washed off in the rains, resulting in collapse of the wall and road.”
Meanwhile, MLA and Deputy Chief Minister Manohar Ajgaonkar along with PWD Minister Deepak Pauskar inspected the collapsed portion of the road. PWD Chief Engineer U Kulkarni and other officials were present.
Ajgaonkar directed PWD Chief Engineer to file a complaint against the highway contractor for his negligence and also ordered to rebuild the road stretch.
