AHMEDABAD: Ranip residents have been crying foul for the past two weeks as several road stretches in their area began to give way following the recent bout of rainfall. Major stretches of road, which were resurfaced ahead of municipal polls in February and a few months after the polls, are turning into rubble.
These stretches are between 370m to 800m long. According to the west zone office of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), these roads were to last till November 2023.
On Tuesday the engineering department in its report to the standing committee had claimed that AMC’s capital expenditure for construction of road, street and footpath had remained below 82% against the budget estimates. This year, the AMC has sanctioned budget to lay 225km of roads.
Patheya budget centre, an organization that studies municipal budgets extensively, in its recent report counters that the civic body always has unspent amount from funds allocated for roads each year. “In 2016-17, an amount of Rs 112.32 crore for capital expenditure for road, streets and footpaths remained unspent. This year’s expenditure on roads was just 41.88% of the budget,” said the report.
It added, “In 2017-18, the capital expenditure was 65.69% but the unspent capital budget was Rs 56.51 crore. In 2018-19, the unspent budget was Rs 87.52 crore and in 2019-20, the unspent budget was Rs. 75.39 crore.”
