PANJIM: Tourism Minister Rohan Khaunte on Saturday said that nearly two-and-half -years will be required to construct the elevated six-lane highway corridor at Porvorim.
Speaking to mediapersons after chairing the second review meeting, Khaunte said that the meeting discussed on diverting the heavy vehicles on urgent basis.
He said that shifting of major airlines from Dabolim international airport to Mopa international airport will also be a challenge as far traffic movement is concerned at Porvorim.
He said that he has asked the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI), State highways and all relevant government authorities to the study the issue so as to ensure smooth movement of traffic. The NHAI has been appointed as nodal agency for better coordination between the concerned departments.
The Tourism Minister said, coordination within departments was a challenge and concern and therefore the NHAI will be the nodal point, to ensure that the issues are sorted out and that it will be the parent department to construct the highway corridor and also plan to reduce the hardships of the people and motorists.
The review meetings will continue so as to ensure inter-department compliance, he said, adding that highway corridor was much awaited project which was required at Porvorim.
When asked how many houses would be demolished for the construction of the new highway, the Minister said, “It will be minimum. First let us resolve the issues. There will be minimum disturbances to the existing houses and it is being looked into. As far demolition of houses are concerned, it will be hardly anything or minimum,” he said.
The Tourism Minister said that he sought the Chief Minister PramodSawant’s intervention so as to ensure that the new flights may come to Mopa airport while, whatever flights arriving at Dabolim may continue so that there is no conflict of interest and confusion.
“We have to ensure that both airport survive and both do their business. We need to take corrective measures to bring smoothness when development works are carried out,” he said.