AGARTALA, August 8 (TIWN): The first consignment of truckloads of bitumen has reached the state after a lull of almost two-three months, official sources said. A highly placed source in the state administration today said that the state is slowly recovering from the bitumen crisis which hit construction industry in the state for the past few months. Asked about the issue, Engineer-in-Chief of the Public Works Department (PWD) Sunil Bhowmik said later this evening that 1 rack of bitumen, holding around 2,000 MT, arrived at Lumding railway station a week back. Transshipment of the cargo from trains from the Broad Gauge (BG) tracks to Meter Gauge (MG) rail carriers is currently in progress, he said.

The official admitted that the first few truckloads of bitumen reached Agartala on Thursday but said that much was left compared to the required amount. “We paid around Rs. 40 crores in advance for 3.5 racks of bitumen to the Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL) authorities. And that was some 3 months back. We haven’t yet got one complete rack.

All monsoon construction works came on the verge of total stall when the Department had to adopt some strictures in issuing bitumen”, Bhowmik said. Interacting with the media at his office in the civil secretariat here this morning, the official said that the Department of Public Works (PWD) is currently facing crises in maintaining pace with the pending load of road construction works due to shortage of bitumen.

He said that with the six month mega block of the Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) drawing nearer, the authorities are now laying highest stress on procuring foodgrains to ensure the required foodgrain stocks to last the maximum possible period during the mega block. All other transshipments were affected since foodgrains are now given top priority, Bhowmik said.

The NFR is slated to start a six-month mega block from October 01 this year. Speaking about stopgap arrangements, Engineer-in-Chief Sunil Bhowmik said that the PWD authorities recently wrote to the Chairman of the Centeal Railway Board seeking his intervention into the issue. The crisis was more aggravated due to the fact the necessary meter gauge rail wagons to carry the bitumen are not commonplace these days anymore.

“We need around 2,000 MT of bitumen for the amount of work that we have now in hand. We have request the railway board authorities for at least one rack of bitumen to which they agreed. They said the consignment would be reaching us soon provided that NFR authorities didn’t interfere with their priority issues on foodgrain”, the PWD Engineer-in-Chief said.

He added that minor maintenance and repair works allowed to be done in the monsoon are being currently done. Major works would start from September and would continue till March, 2015. “We are expecting an average requirement of around 5,000 MT bitumen in this timeframe. With the mega block in progress, I don’t see how we are going to procure all this bitumen unless we procured some well in advance”, the official said.

Bhowmik today further said that the Department is expecting a second rack of bitumen to arrive at Lumding railway station by the mid of the current week.