Plans to airlift equipment for faster road infra in Arunachal

Road infrastructure work in the mountainous Arunachal Pradesh might get a fillip as the Centre plans to press into service hired helicopters to airlift heavy machinery and equipment in order to expedite works.

The airlifting capability of the Indian Air Force has been “extremely low” vis-à-vis the inhospitable terrain of the state, thus delaying many road construction works in the state. Thus, the centre now plans to hire choppers to assist the Border Roads Organisation (BRO), which constructs and maintains most of the roads in Arunachal Pradesh, by fast air lifting required goods, machineries and heavy equipment.

Presiding over a meeting of the Border Roads Development Board (BRDB) in Itanagar last evening, MM Pallam Raju, Union minister of state for defence, has asked the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) “to explore the possibility of hiring helicopters from outside agencies to expedite construction of roads in the state.”

Raju has asked the BRO to build road infrastructure right up to the border areas.

Lt General MC Badhani, director-general of BRO told Raju that against BRO’s need of 3,500 tonnes last year, only 400 tonnes were actually airlifted by the Air Force.  

He said that though the Pawan Hans had submitted an initial proposal to partially meet the BRO’s helicopter requirements in the North-East, it could not do so as its pilots were not trained for hanging payloads that need to be airdropped in inaccessible places lacking landing facilities.

Over 75 per cent of BRO’s road construction projects in Arunachal Pradesh are in high altitude areas, Badhani added. The BRO is presently building 2,764 kms of the total 5,061 kms road length in Arunachal Pradesh.

Experts present at the meeting said that the earthmovers and machineries deployed in snowbound areas were reduced to a life span of just 30 percent of their optimum level due to inhospitable weather and terrain.

Expressing concern over the fatality rate in the BRO, Badhani said it was on an average nine fatalities in 10 days and was much higher than the fatality rate of the Army battalions in Jammu and Kashmir.

Yesterday, Raju had inaugurated a World War-II War Memorial cemetery at Jairampur in Arunachal’s Changlang district. The cemetery is located on the historic Stillwell Road, built by the Allied Forces, linking Ledo in upper Assam, to China via Myanmar.