The Chennai Port Road Connectivity project will fail to meet the June 2013 deadline set by Union Shipping Minister G K Vasan as the work has been affected due to traffic and unauthorised parking of trucks along the Manali Oil Refinery Road (MORR) and Inner Ring Road (IRR), according to Chennai Port Trust and National Highways Authority of India.
“These trucks are parked 24X7 making it difficult to work on the stretch. We have taken up the issue with the Chennai police as well as Chennai Port but there is no solution at sight,” said I G Reddy, NHAI chief general manager (Technical), Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
Speaking to Express on the sidelines of the 3rd Southern Region Shipping Conclave here on Saturday, he said that the ongoing works at the 30-km stretch, earlier called the Ennore-Manali Road Improvement Project (EMRIP), will not be over by next June.
“Arrangements should be made to have some parking space outside Chennai to park these vehicles so that we can proceed with our work. We do have funds and equipment but can’t work due to this problem,” he said.
For his part, the deputy chairman of Chennai Port, P C Parida, conceded the bottlenecks but promised that the project would be completed by October 2013. At present, 40 per cent of work on the project is over. Also, discussions are on to identify 30-40 acres of land outside Chennai for parking these trucks, he said, agreeing that the issue has to be addressed soon.
Significantly, sources stated that “most of the trucks parked on the stretch don’t have valid papers.”
Earlier, Shipping Minister G K Vasan inaugurated the conclave and said that his ministry has set a target of creating additional capacity of 244 million metric tonnes in major ports and non-major ports.
He also said his ministry is working on the formulation of a new land policy as well as captive land use policy for major ports, which would be transparent and provide level playing field to all stakeholders.
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