CANACONA: In the era when the world is talking of high tech bridges as arc, cable stayed, cantilever, suspension or moveable, the residents of Bhutpal a hamlet in Cotigao village have been constructing an alternate arrangement every year with locally available resources like wooden sticks and twines to cross the Talpona River during monsoon season. This temporary bridge is used not only by the adults but also by school children as well.
With the other access to their village kilometres away, the residents of Bhutpal taking advantage of the pillars of a dam across the Talpona river stitch together a traditional type pedestrian way to cross in monsoon season when the river flows over its brim.
Without a proper bridge to link their ward, a resident of Bhutpal villager speaking to Herald said that over 30 villagers contribute their man hours to build this stone age type, temporary make shift wooden sticks pedestrian bridge every year before the onset of rains. “With this river raging in monsoon we sometimes risk our lives while crossing the Talpona river when it gets flooded in monsoon,” a villager said.
Sarpanch of Cotigao Umesh Gaonkar said that without a pakka bridge the Bhutpal village has remained detached from the Cotigao village. To over this hurdle, the residents build a make shift pedestrian bridge over the pillars of a dam in the village. “The request to build a concrete slab connecting each of the pillars to the Water Resources Department is in limbo. The file is stuck up due to the switchover to GST from Value Added Tax,” Gaonkar said.
The villagers are afraid of the fact that school children are using this access to reach their classes and face a dangerous situation especially when the water level rises to dangerous levels due to the flooding in the river during monsoon.
A local resident speaking to Herald said that last month the wooden stick bridge, perhaps an unique one in the State, got swept by the raging currents of the floods, luckily no one was using the bridge when it was swept, the sarpanch added.
The officials of the Water Resources Department in Canacona said that they had forwarded the estimates for construction of a concrete bridge over the pillars of the Bhutpal dam in the village. However, the file has been returned from the division office with a remark to submit a design and to do a proper estimate as per the design which is in the final stages of designing, they said.
