Shopian: The residents and fruit growers of scores of villages in south Kashmir’s Shopian district are facing hardships due to inordinate delay in the construction of a culvert.
According to residents, the construction work on a culvert in Sugan village of the district has been lingering on for over three years, causing inconvenience to the residents and growers in adjoining Chitragm, Bapora, Safnagri and Zainpora villages.
Mubashir Ahmad Bhat, a resident, said that they had to take a long detour to reach district headquarters.
“It takes us an extra hour to reach Shopian town,” said Bhat, who runs a business outlet in Shopian.
He said that it was the second time in two years that the culvert was being constructed.
Bhat said that, earlier, the culvert collapsed only a few months after it was constructed due to substandard construction material use.
Many apple growers said that they faced a host of issues due the under-construction culvert.
“We have to pay extra transportation charges to the truckers to ferry the fruit to both local and outside Mandis,” said Riyaz Ahamd, a fruit grower from Chitragam village.
Another fruit grower said that as the Shopian-Bijbehara road was already in a dilapidated condition, commuters and transporters used to take this road as an alternate route.
“Now due to inordinate delay in the construction of the culvert, they have to ply on the same dilapidated road,” he said. “There are always chances of accidents.”
An R&B official, who declined to be quoted, said that the matter had been brought to their notice and the work on the culvert would be expedited.