A potholed road in Guwahati
Guwahati, Jan 17 : The Asian Development Bank is committed to funding the North Eastern States Roads Investment Program in the first quarter of the year.
The commitment was mentioned in the bank’s Country Business Operations Plan 2010 released a few days ago. The project will cover 540km of roads in six states of the region — Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Sikkim and Tripura. The plan says the $200-million loan is at an advanced stage of processing and will be approved soon.
The bank said the poor condition of the roads, particularly those maintained by the state road agencies, had been worsened by these agencies’ weak capacity in sector management.
The goal of this investment programme is to alleviate this problem and, with development programmes being implemented in other sectors, contribute to economic growth and poverty reduction in the Northeast.
The investment programme will have two components —an investment component and a capacity building component. It will be complementary to the special accelerated road development programme for the Northeast, a centrally sponsored road investment programme to improve road connectivity to state capitals and district headquarters.
While the central scheme focuses on improving national highways and roads of strategic importance, the investment programme will improve intrastate connectivity, mainly to district headquarters and places of administrative and economic importance in the individual states.
The project is expected to improve 540km of road sections in the region and provide capacity building support to the state governments to implement road improvement, road management, road safety, environmental and social safeguards.
Most of the institutional issues (overstaffing, lack of technical expertise) and funding problems (scarce funds weighted toward capital expenditure and lack of maintenance funding) are the consequences of inattention and non-intervention over a long period of time, the bank said.
The land acquisition and the resettlement impact of four sample sub-projects — Jania to Kalitakuchi (72km) in Assam; Pasighat to Pangin (76km) in Arunachal Pradesh; Garobadha to Dalu (98.5km) in Meghalaya and Melli to Nayabazar (26.5km) in Sikkim has been non-significant.
The affected households will be entitled to compensation for loss of structure at replacement value, shifting costs and other income restoration assistance.
A resettlement framework has been prepared for the subsequent roads.
A resettlement plan for each subproject will be prepared and approved by the state PWD and submitted to the bank for approval.
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