Male' Mayor Mohamed Muizzu has once again expressed concern on how the reconstruction of Male' City's Ameenee Magu is being carried out.
The government awarded the Ameenee Magu reconstruction contract to the Road Development Corporation (RDC) on July 3 for MVR 84 million, with a seven-month deadline to complete the work. The practical work of the project was inaugurated on August 30. Asphalt will be laid along 1.7 km of the road, and a modern drainage system will be installed under the project. While streetlights will also be reinstalled, bus stops, signboards, and bumpers will also be constructed.
Earlier last October, Mayor Muizzu said traffic would increase due to the way the road was being rebuilt. He said the current width of the section reserved for vehicles on Ameenee Magu is 25 feet. However, the width will reduce to 21 feet 10 inches when the road is completed. Noting that the existing pavement on both sides of Ameenee Magu is four feet wide, Muizzu said the new pavement would have five feet seven inches on each side, which he believes would worsen road congestion.
The mayor took to the social media platform Twitter once again to criticize the road development project. In his tweet on Friday, Mayor Muizzu said the way the road is being constructed could cause permanent inconvenience to road users.
Muizzu said Ameenee Magu construction work was being carried out extremely slowly and at an extremely high cost. He said the project was awarded for MVR 84 million while the same project could have been completed for MVR 39 million.
The mayor said his biggest concern was that the space for vehicles was narrower and the pavement wider in the new design of the road.
"No changes to the plans to narrow the road's width by three feet and two inches would cause problems for public transport buses and two-way traffic," Muizzu said.
