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| Sunday, 12 September 2004 |
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Colombo-Matara super highway taking shape by Anura Maitipe The first stage of the Colombo-Matara super highway project will be completed shortly, authoritative sources of the Southern Highway told the Sunday Observer. "This is the first super highway in the country and would cost Rs. 30.5 billion. It is the second largest project in the country after the Mahawali development project. With the completion of the super highway, the time taken to travel from Colombo to Matara would be reduced from four hours to one and a half hours", sources added. The construction work of this project was undertaken by Japanese construction firm Kumagai. The highway consists of 15 bridges, 123 underpasses and 380 culverts. At the initial stages of the Colombo-Matara super highway, it will have only four lanes, two on either side. However, once this project is completed, it will consist of six lanes. The length of this road is 131km. The project was begun in March 2003 and is expected to be finished in 2008. However, the construction work is still lagging behind the set target as a result of non-allocation of lands by the Road Development Authority (RDA) in time. Asked about the matter, RDA authorities said: "In the process of acquiring land from private owners, the RDA faced legal problems. Some of these land owners had filed legal action in the Courts and the RDA has no authority to overule courts orders. So we had to go through the courts procedure to solve the problems which resulted in some delay in the process". |
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