Union Road, Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari on Tuesday urged the National Highway Infrastructure Development Corporation (NHIDCL) to improve the road engineering techniques being utilised by them in the country to ensure better quality and road safety.He said that there was a need for NHIDCL to adopt the international standards for road construction and use better technologies while executing projects."If we can improve road engineering then we can improve road safety. We need to adopt international road construction standards. Today the situation is such that we continue to have 5 lakh road accidents and over 2.5 lakh deaths due to poor road infrastructures every year," said Gadkari, addressing the public, including the officials, at the second inception day of the NHIDCL, which was formed in July 2014.
NHIDCL has been mandated by the ministry to construct over 4,000 km of roads in northeast and the hilly terrains of Jammu and Kashmir and Uttrakhand.Highlighting that there was a delay in the completion of several Detailed Project Reports (DPRs), a process involving the planning of the roads before execution, Gadkari said: "The system has a problem. NHIDCL has seen several times delay in the preparation of the DPRs, which needs to be taken care of.""If the DPRs are so delayed then how much of time will it take for the execution of the work by the contractors. The system needs to be improved," he said.Among the other areas where Gadkari directed NHIDCL Managing Director Anand Kumar to do improvement included bringing down the cost of the construction materials and getting the roads contracts completed in time.