Mangaluru : The concreting of the stretch from Kempuhole to Addahole on Shiradi Ghat has been completed. The road is likely to be  open for the traffic from first week of July.

The work was taken up by the National Highway division of the Public Works Department as a part of Phase 2 of the Shiradi Ghat stretch.

About 95% of the work on three bridges has been completed.

The concreting of the stretch of the National Highway from Kempuhole to Addahole, covering a distance of 12.38 km, has been completed. The curing of the stretch is underway.

The work on 77 culverts has also been completed. The work on extending three bridges is in the final stage and only a 600-metre stretch to connect the bridges is pending.

The government had sanctioned Rs 74 crore for the second phase of the Shiradi Ghat stretch. The movement of vehicles on the Shiradi Ghat stretch was banned from January 20, to facilitate the completion of the work. The continuous rain in Shiradi Ghat in the last one month had hampered the work.

Speaking to media, Raghavan the National Highway division of Public Works Department superintendent engineer, said that if the rain stops for two days, then the road work will be completed. “Only a portion of the stretch that connects bridge is yet to be concreted. By all means, vehicular movement is likely to be allowed in the first week of July,” he said.

The work contract was entrusted to Ocean Construction India Pvt Ltd. The contractor had procured a new machine worth Rs 7.5 crore from Germany when Phase 1 of the work was begun in 2015.

For Phase 2 of the work, the contractor had procured machines worth Rs 10 crore from Germany. The contractor had also purchased the Texture Curing Machine (TCM) 180.

With the machine, concrete curing is made easier and thus helped in early completion of the work. In the first phase, 11.77-km stretch of the road from Heggadde to Kempuhole was concreted at a cost of Rs 69.90 crore and inaugurated on August 9, 2015 by the then PWD Minister H C Mahadevappa.