Over 100 mud roads in Arakkonam, Sholinghur, Arcot and Walajah taluks of Ranipet district will soon get proper roads with work beginning on Thursday.
This comes in the wake of an 18-month-old girl bitten by a snake at Athimarathurkollai village in Alleri hillock in Vellore. She was carried on foot to the Government Taluk Hospital in Anaicut but she died on the way on May 26. The ambulance driver could not drive beyond Varadalampattu village at the foot of Alleri Hills as there was no road. So, the parents had to carry the body for eight km on foot to Athyimarathurkollai village. The video of the parents carrying the body of the child went viral, sparking an outrage.
Accompanied by Ranipet Collector S. Valarmathi, Minister for Handlooms and Textiles R. Gandhi laid the foundation for a bituminous road between Vannivedu Mottur village and Devadanam village, a distance of around one km, in Walajah taluk. The work is being implemented by the District Rural Development Agency (DRDA), Ranipet.
“The identified village roads are being laid for the first time with bitumen. These stretches connect villages to each other and also with nearby towns but have not been laid so far,” G. Lokanayaki, Project Director, DRDA (Ranipet), told The Hindu.
DRDA officials said that under Chief Minister Rural Development Scheme 2022-23, laying of bitumen stretches have been taken up in 104 village roads at a cost of ₹50.82 crore. In other words, 121.32 km of rural stretches will be laid with bitumen before the onset of northeast monsoon. Among seven taluks in Ranipet district, Thimiri has the most number of 24 villages, covering 23.76 km, followed by Sholinghur with 12 villages and 18.54 km and Arakkonam with 22 roads covering 17.3 km under the project.
As per plan, the identified village roads will be 7.5 metres wide that include 3.5 metres of carriageway. Adequate footpaths, speed breakers, warning sign boards, reflectors and street lights also form part of the work. Most of these stretches will be laid by women workers under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme. Once laid, the village roads will be maintained at least twice a year by the DRDA.
Officials said that currently bus services are being operated in some of these mud roads in remote villages in the district. Ambulances also use the stretches to shift the injured and sick from villages to the nearest healthcare centres in big towns like Arakkonam, Walajah and Arcot.
