Abel Pascoal Barretto
CANACONA: National Highway 66, commonly referred to as NH66, has one of the highest number of vehicles plying on it and connects Panvel (a city south of Mumbai) to Cape Comorin (Kanyakumari), passing through the States of Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
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“Due to the prominence of this highway in the Western India region, the road is widened to either four or six lanes at most places, but a stretch of about 50 kms from Polem to Margao lies in a dilapidated state with cracks, potholes and sunken stretches, which makes driving on this highway a nightmare,” say the locals.
Currently, the highway is comparatively narrow and without dividers, but for the 7.4 kms Manohar Parrikar sea-sidelink connecting Char Rasta with Mashem with two bridges was inaugurated last year to save time, money and lives of the commuters.
The narrowed road and lack of dividers have led to increase in accidents of head-on collisions between the vehicles. At some places, the signboards indicating left or right turns, speed-breakers, etc., are either damaged or missing.
In addition to its narrow span, there are no guard railings along the sides of the highway at some places. The sides of the road are at times at a lower level than the road itself. It is also a common occurrence to find carcasses of both wild and stray animals on the road, indicating the risk of inattentive animals face while scurrying across the road.
“The complaints from the regular commuters regarding the anomalies have since long fallen on the deaf ears as the National Highways Authority of India authorities play deaf and dumb,” said the locals.
“Worst affected are the two-wheeler riders as at many stretches, the road has sunk considerably and developed cracks, potholes as well. The road on either side of Karmalghat has turned into a death trap as the road here has turned despicable,” motorists alleged. The locals and drivers of vehicles using this road have been urging the concerned authorities to temporarily fill the potholes dotting this road if they are unable to conduct exhaustive road works at the present.
Satish Paiginkar, former deputy sarpanch of Poinguinim Panchayat lamented the lackluster attitude of the authorities for not maintaining this stretch as per the highway standards.
“This road of apart from being narrow has sunk as well and cracked at Shelli, Karmalghat and Padi while the road at many places is washed away in patches which expose the commuters to heightened risk to both life and property,” inferred Paiginkar.
Enquiries over the bad conditions of this stretch with National Highways Authority of India authorities revealed that they have sent the estimates to the Central authorities and are awaiting allotment of funds.
“We are going to fill up the potholes and washed out portions before the Christmas,” informed a highly placed source in the PWD (Highways).
