Roopa Lall
Port Blair, July 11: The National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation (NHIDCL) today relaunched Thoratang Bridge, one of the most crucial bridges of Middle Andaman, which had collapsed last month.
The Thoratang Bailey bridge, over Thoratang Nallah, is crucial for busy traffic of Andaman Trunk Road. The bridge had collapsed on 12 June 2019 when two massive dumpers of NHIDCL contractors tried to cross the bride at the same time.
After several trials yesterday the bridge was finally re-launched today and opened for ATR traffic, which brought great relief for ATR commuters.
“The Contractor of NHIDCL, Visishta Construction Private Ltd. had done a great job by repairing the bridge without taking any money from the NHIDCL. Now we are trying to increase capacity of the bridge to 50 tones,” said Mr. Manoj Kumar Verma the General Manger, Project of NHIDCL.
He said that some parts of the bridge were totally damaged and hence those parts were brought from Kolkata. He added the rain also delayed the work.
“I express my special thanks to secretary APWD, Secretary RD,DC N&MA,AC Rangat, SP N&M, SDM Sri Gupta, CE APWD,EE APWD, Diglipur, EE APWD, Rangat and all concerned official of Andaman administration for their valuable contributions towards relaunching of this bridge,” Mr. Verma said.
He also thanked Mr. Ravi, Mr. Pankaj, Mr. Amit, Mr. Venu, Mr. Ratan, Mr. Chenchaiya, Mr. Arun, Mr. Gurpreet and all workforce who coordinated and worked in a planned manner to achieve set target almost within stipulated time in spite of odds of the Island.
The NHIDCL is presently carrying out three huge projects in Andamans viz construction of two massive bridges at Middle Andaman and up-gradation of Andaman Trunk Road, which is the life line of North and Middle Andaman.
The Thoratang Bridge which had collapsed last month was anyhow had to be brought down during later phase of ATR upgradation works and there is a proposal to build a concrete bridge over Thoratang Nallah.
