Including Imphal-Jiribam/Kohima routes Govt seeks foreign aid for NE roads
Source: The Sangai Express / Courtesy : TNN
New Delhi, January 15 2014 :
Struggling to push road cons-truction in the north-east, particularly in strategic areas, the government has approach-ed over half a dozen foreign missions in India including Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Spain and Italy to ask their construction companies to participate in road building ac-tivities in this region.
How- ever, China was left out.
Senior highway ministry sources said they had approa-ched countries whose contrac- tors are already executing road projects in the country.
"We are trying to get as many responses as we can from fo-reign companies so that there is expeditious construction of highways," said an official.
He added that strategic reasons were behind exclusion of Chinese contractors.
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The road transport and highways ministry, which is in-charge of most highways in these states including Assam, Mizoram, Nagaland and Meghalaya, has called a meeting of contractors from both domestic and overseas to find why they are not interested in road projects.
Sources said officials from state public works department (PWDs) and environment and forests ministry have also been called to the meeting at NHAI headquarters.
"There is lukewarm response to road projects even as we are pushing more works.
Once we have a frank interaction with contractors, things will be clear and we can work out an actionable plan," said a ministry official.
Meanwhile, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has shown interest in investing in road and other infrastructure projects in the region for "strategic reasons" considering the increasing presence of China across the border.
JICA is Japan's independent governmental agency that coordinates official development assistance.
JICA is holding a conference on Thursday on cross- border connectivity for economic health of north-east and south Asian countries.
Sources said at least eight stretches of NH-53, 39, 54, 44, 40 and 60 have been identified by the ministry and JICA for possible investment by the agency.
These include Imphal-Jiribam, Imphal-Kohima, Maram-Dimapur, Ukhrul-Tadubi and Aizawl-Tuipang highway corridors.
Officials said JICA may take up at least 500 km stret-ches of crucial highways and may invest in building a few bridges on the Brahmaputra and Barak rivers in Assam.